This PDF version of Free Culture is licensed
under a Creative Commons license. This license permits
non-commercial use of this work,
so long as attribution is given.
For more information about the license,
click the icon above, or visit
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/1.0/>.
-Buy a copy of this book:
click here

At the end of his review of my first book, Code: And Other Laws of
Cyberspace, David Pogue, a brilliant writer and author of countless
technical and computer-related texts, wrote this:
Unlike actual law, Internet software has no capacity to punish. It
doesn’t affect people who aren’t online (and only a tiny minority
of the world population is). And if you don’t like the Internet’s
system, you can always flip off the modem.1

Pogue was skeptical of the core argument of the book—that software, or “code,” functioned as a kind of law—and his review suggested
the happy thought that if life in cyberspace got bad, we could always
“drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome”-like simply flip a switch and be back
home. Turn off the modem, unplug the computer, and any troubles
that exist in that space wouldn’t “affect” us anymore.
Pogue might have been right in 1999—I’m skeptical, but maybe.
But even if he was right then, the point is not right now: Free Culture
is about the troubles the Internet causes even after the modem is turned
xiii

off. It is an argument about how the battles that now rage regarding life
on-line have fundamentally affected “people who aren’t online.” There
is no switch that will insulate us from the Internet’s effect.
But unlike Code, the argument here is not much about the Internet
itself. It is instead about the consequence of the Internet to a part of
our tradition that is much more fundamental, and, as hard as this is for
a geek-wanna-be to admit, much more important.
That tradition is the way our culture gets made. As I explain in the
pages that follow, we come from a tradition of “free culture”—not
“free” as in “free beer” (to borrow a phrase from the founder of the freesoftware movement 2), but “free” as in “free speech,” “free markets,” “free
trade,” “free enterprise,” “free will,” and “free elections.” A free culture
supports and protects creators and innovators. It does this directly by
granting intellectual property rights. But it does so indirectly by limiting the reach of those rights, to guarantee that follow-on creators and
innovators remain as free as possible from the control of the past. A free
culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a
market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a
“permission culture”—a culture in which creators get to create only
with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past.
If we understood this change, I believe we would resist it. Not “we”
on the Left or “you” on the Right, but we who have no stake in the
particular industries of culture that defined the twentieth century.
Whether you are on the Left or the Right, if you are in this sense disinterested, then the story I tell here will trouble you. For the changes I
describe affect values that both sides of our political culture deem fundamental.
We saw a glimpse of this bipartisan outrage in the early summer of
2003. As the FCC considered changes in media ownership rules that
would relax limits on media concentration, an extraordinary coalition
generated more than 700,000 letters to the FCC opposing the change.
As William Safire described marching “uncomfortably alongside
CodePink Women for Peace and the National Rifle Association, bexiv PREFACE

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_00_i-xviii_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:46 PM Page xv

tween liberal Olympia Snowe and conservative Ted Stevens,” he formulated perhaps most simply just what was at stake: the concentration
of power. And as he asked,
Does that sound unconservative? Not to me. The concentration
of power—political, corporate, media, cultural—should be anathema to conservatives. The diffusion of power through local control, thereby encouraging individual participation, is the essence
of federalism and the greatest expression of democracy.3

This idea is an element of the argument of Free Culture, though my
focus is not just on the concentration of power produced by concentrations in ownership, but more importantly, if because less visibly, on the
concentration of power produced by a radical change in the effective
scope of the law. The law is changing; that change is altering the way our
culture gets made; that change should worry you—whether or not you
care about the Internet, and whether you’re on Safire’s left or on his right.

The inspiration for the title and for much of the argument of
this book comes from the work of Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation. Indeed, as I reread Stallman’s own work, especially
the essays in Free Software, Free Society, I realize that all of the theoretical insights I develop here are insights Stallman described decades
ago. One could thus well argue that this work is “merely” derivative.
I accept that criticism, if indeed it is a criticism. The work of a
lawyer is always derivative, and I mean to do nothing more in this book
than to remind a culture about a tradition that has always been its own.
Like Stallman, I defend that tradition on the basis of values. Like
Stallman, I believe those are the values of freedom. And like Stallman,
I believe those are values of our past that will need to be defended in
our future. A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now.
PREFACE xv

Like Stallman’s arguments for free software, an argument for free
culture stumbles on a confusion that is hard to avoid, and even harder
to understand. A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not
a culture in which artists don’t get paid. A culture without property, or
in which creators can’t get paid, is anarchy, not freedom. Anarchy is not
what I advance here.
Instead, the free culture that I defend in this book is a balance between anarchy and control. A free culture, like a free market, is filled
with property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get
enforced by the state. But just as a free market is perverted if its property becomes feudal, so too can a free culture be queered by extremism
in the property rights that define it. That is what I fear about our culture today. It is against that extremism that this book is written.

On December 17, 1903, on a windy North Carolina beach for just
shy of one hundred seconds, the Wright brothers demonstrated that a
heavier-than-air, self-propelled vehicle could fly. The moment was electric and its importance widely understood. Almost immediately, there
was an explosion of interest in this newfound technology of manned
flight, and a gaggle of innovators began to build upon it.
At the time the Wright brothers invented the airplane, American
law held that a property owner presumptively owned not just the surface of his land, but all the land below, down to the center of the earth,
and all the space above, to “an indefinite extent, upwards.”1 For many
years, scholars had puzzled about how best to interpret the idea that
rights in land ran to the heavens. Did that mean that you owned the
stars? Could you prosecute geese for their willful and regular trespass?
Then came airplanes, and for the first time, this principle of American law—deep within the foundations of our tradition, and acknowledged by the most important legal thinkers of our past—mattered. If
my land reaches to the heavens, what happens when United flies over
my field? Do I have the right to banish it from my property? Am I al1

lowed to enter into an exclusive license with Delta Airlines? Could we
set up an auction to decide how much these rights are worth?
In 1945, these questions became a federal case. When North Carolina farmers Thomas Lee and Tinie Causby started losing chickens
because of low-flying military aircraft (the terrified chickens apparently flew into the barn walls and died), the Causbys filed a lawsuit saying that the government was trespassing on their land. The airplanes,
of course, never touched the surface of the Causbys’ land. But if, as
Blackstone, Kent, and Coke had said, their land reached to “an indefinite extent, upwards,” then the government was trespassing on their
property, and the Causbys wanted it to stop.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the Causbys’ case. Congress had
declared the airways public, but if one’s property really extended to the
heavens, then Congress’s declaration could well have been an unconstitutional “taking” of property without compensation. The Court acknowledged that “it is ancient doctrine that common law ownership of
the land extended to the periphery of the universe.” But Justice Douglas
had no patience for ancient doctrine. In a single paragraph, hundreds of
years of property law were erased. As he wrote for the Court,
[The] doctrine has no place in the modern world. The air is a
public highway, as Congress has declared. Were that not true,
every transcontinental flight would subject the operator to countless trespass suits. Common sense revolts at the idea. To recognize
such private claims to the airspace would clog these highways, seriously interfere with their control and development in the public
interest, and transfer into private ownership that to which only
the public has a just claim.2

“Common sense revolts at the idea.”
This is how the law usually works. Not often this abruptly or impatiently, but eventually, this is how it works. It was Douglas’s style not to
dither. Other justices would have blathered on for pages to reach the
2 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 3

conclusion that Douglas holds in a single line: “Common sense revolts
at the idea.” But whether it takes pages or a few words, it is the special
genius of a common law system, as ours is, that the law adjusts to the
technologies of the time. And as it adjusts, it changes. Ideas that were
as solid as rock in one age crumble in another.
Or at least, this is how things happen when there’s no one powerful
on the other side of the change. The Causbys were just farmers. And
though there were no doubt many like them who were upset by the
growing traffic in the air (though one hopes not many chickens flew
themselves into walls), the Causbys of the world would find it very
hard to unite and stop the idea, and the technology, that the Wright
brothers had birthed. The Wright brothers spat airplanes into the
technological meme pool; the idea then spread like a virus in a chicken
coop; farmers like the Causbys found themselves surrounded by “what
seemed reasonable” given the technology that the Wrights had produced. They could stand on their farms, dead chickens in hand, and
shake their fists at these newfangled technologies all they wanted.
They could call their representatives or even file a lawsuit. But in the
end, the force of what seems “obvious” to everyone else—the power of
“common sense”—would prevail. Their “private interest” would not be
allowed to defeat an obvious public gain.

Edwin Howard Armstrong is one of America’s forgotten inventor
geniuses. He came to the great American inventor scene just after the
titans Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. But his work in
the area of radio technology was perhaps the most important of any
single inventor in the first fifty years of radio. He was better educated
than Michael Faraday, who as a bookbinder’s apprentice had discovered electric induction in 1831. But he had the same intuition about
how the world of radio worked, and on at least three occasions, Armstrong invented profoundly important technologies that advanced our
understanding of radio.
INTRODUCTION 3

On the day after Christmas, 1933, four patents were issued to Armstrong for his most significant invention—FM radio. Until then, consumer radio had been amplitude-modulated (AM) radio. The theorists
of the day had said that frequency-modulated (FM) radio could never
work. They were right about FM radio in a narrow band of spectrum.
But Armstrong discovered that frequency-modulated radio in a wide
band of spectrum would deliver an astonishing fidelity of sound, with
much less transmitter power and static.
On November 5, 1935, he demonstrated the technology at a meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers at the Empire State Building in
New York City. He tuned his radio dial across a range of AM stations,
until the radio locked on a broadcast that he had arranged from seventeen miles away. The radio fell totally silent, as if dead, and then with a
clarity no one else in that room had ever heard from an electrical device, it produced the sound of an announcer’s voice: “This is amateur
station W2AG at Yonkers, New York, operating on frequency modulation at two and a half meters.”
The audience was hearing something no one had thought possible:
A glass of water was poured before the microphone in Yonkers; it
sounded like a glass of water being poured. . . . A paper was
crumpled and torn; it sounded like paper and not like a crackling
forest fire. . . . Sousa marches were played from records and a piano solo and guitar number were performed. . . . The music was
projected with a live-ness rarely if ever heard before from a radio
“music box.”3

As our own common sense tells us, Armstrong had discovered a
vastly superior radio technology. But at the time of his invention, Armstrong was working for RCA. RCA was the dominant player in the
then dominant AM radio market. By 1935, there were a thousand radio
stations across the United States, but the stations in large cities were all
owned by a handful of networks.
4 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 5

RCA’s president, David Sarnoff, a friend of Armstrong’s, was eager
that Armstrong discover a way to remove static from AM radio. So
Sarnoff was quite excited when Armstrong told him he had a device
that removed static from “radio.” But when Armstrong demonstrated
his invention, Sarnoff was not pleased.
I thought Armstrong would invent some kind of a filter to remove
static from our AM radio. I didn’t think he’d start a revolution—
start up a whole damn new industry to compete with RCA.4

Armstrong’s invention threatened RCA’s AM empire, so the company launched a campaign to smother FM radio. While FM may have
been a superior technology, Sarnoff was a superior tactician. As one author described,
The forces for FM, largely engineering, could not overcome the
weight of strategy devised by the sales, patent, and legal offices
to subdue this threat to corporate position. For FM, if allowed to
develop unrestrained, posed . . . a complete reordering of radio
power . . . and the eventual overthrow of the carefully restricted
AM system on which RCA had grown to power.5

RCA at first kept the technology in house, insisting that further
tests were needed. When, after two years of testing, Armstrong grew
impatient, RCA began to use its power with the government to stall
FM radio’s deployment generally. In 1936, RCA hired the former head
of the FCC and assigned him the task of assuring that the FCC assign
spectrum in a way that would castrate FM—principally by moving FM
radio to a different band of spectrum. At first, these efforts failed. But
when Armstrong and the nation were distracted by World War II,
RCA’s work began to be more successful. Soon after the war ended, the
FCC announced a set of policies that would have one clear effect: FM
radio would be crippled. As Lawrence Lessing described it,
INTRODUCTION 5

The series of body blows that FM radio received right after the
war, in a series of rulings manipulated through the FCC by the
big radio interests, were almost incredible in their force and deviousness.6

To make room in the spectrum for RCA’s latest gamble, television,
FM radio users were to be moved to a totally new spectrum band. The
power of FM radio stations was also cut, meaning FM could no longer
be used to beam programs from one part of the country to another.
(This change was strongly supported by AT&T, because the loss of
FM relaying stations would mean radio stations would have to buy
wired links from AT&T.) The spread of FM radio was thus choked, at
least temporarily.
Armstrong resisted RCA’s efforts. In response, RCA resisted Armstrong’s patents. After incorporating FM technology into the emerging
standard for television, RCA declared the patents invalid—baselessly,
and almost fifteen years after they were issued. It thus refused to pay
him royalties. For six years, Armstrong fought an expensive war of litigation to defend the patents. Finally, just as the patents expired, RCA
offered a settlement so low that it would not even cover Armstrong’s
lawyers’ fees. Defeated, broken, and now broke, in 1954 Armstrong
wrote a short note to his wife and then stepped out of a thirteenthstory window to his death.
This is how the law sometimes works. Not often this tragically, and
rarely with heroic drama, but sometimes, this is how it works. From the
beginning, government and government agencies have been subject
to capture. They are more likely captured when a powerful interest is
threatened by either a legal or technical change. That powerful interest
too often exerts its influence within the government to get the government to protect it. The rhetoric of this protection is of course always
public spirited; the reality is something different. Ideas that were as
solid as rock in one age, but that, left to themselves, would crumble in

6 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 7

another, are sustained through this subtle corruption of our political
process. RCA had what the Causbys did not: the power to stifle the effect of technological change.

There’s no single inventor of the Internet. Nor is there any good
date upon which to mark its birth. Yet in a very short time, the Internet has become part of ordinary American life. According to the Pew
Internet and American Life Project, 58 percent of Americans had access to the Internet in 2002, up from 49 percent two years before.7
That number could well exceed two thirds of the nation by the end
of 2004.
As the Internet has been integrated into ordinary life, it has
changed things. Some of these changes are technical—the Internet has
made communication faster, it has lowered the cost of gathering data,
and so on. These technical changes are not the focus of this book. They
are important. They are not well understood. But they are the sort of
thing that would simply go away if we all just switched the Internet off.
They don’t affect people who don’t use the Internet, or at least they
don’t affect them directly. They are the proper subject of a book about
the Internet. But this is not a book about the Internet.
Instead, this book is about an effect of the Internet beyond the Internet itself: an effect upon how culture is made. My claim is that the
Internet has induced an important and unrecognized change in that
process. That change will radically transform a tradition that is as old as
the Republic itself. Most, if they recognized this change, would reject
it. Yet most don’t even see the change that the Internet has introduced.
We can glimpse a sense of this change by distinguishing between
commercial and noncommercial culture, and by mapping the law’s regulation of each. By “commercial culture” I mean that part of our culture
that is produced and sold or produced to be sold. By “noncommercial
culture” I mean all the rest. When old men sat around parks or on

street corners telling stories that kids and others consumed, that was
noncommercial culture. When Noah Webster published his “Reader,”
or Joel Barlow his poetry, that was commercial culture.
At the beginning of our history, and for just about the whole of our
tradition, noncommercial culture was essentially unregulated. Of
course, if your stories were lewd, or if your song disturbed the peace,
then the law might intervene. But the law was never directly concerned
with the creation or spread of this form of culture, and it left this culture “free.” The ordinary ways in which ordinary individuals shared and
transformed their culture—telling stories, reenacting scenes from plays
or TV, participating in fan clubs, sharing music, making tapes—were
left alone by the law.
The focus of the law was on commercial creativity. At first slightly,
then quite extensively, the law protected the incentives of creators by
granting them exclusive rights to their creative work, so that they could
sell those exclusive rights in a commercial marketplace.8 This is also, of
course, an important part of creativity and culture, and it has become
an increasingly important part in America. But in no sense was it dominant within our tradition. It was instead just one part, a controlled
part, balanced with the free.
This rough divide between the free and the controlled has now
been erased.9 The Internet has set the stage for this erasure and,
pushed by big media, the law has now affected it. For the first time in
our tradition, the ordinary ways in which individuals create and share
culture fall within the reach of the regulation of the law, which has expanded to draw within its control a vast amount of culture and creativity that it never reached before. The technology that preserved the
balance of our history—between uses of our culture that were free and
uses of our culture that were only upon permission—has been undone.
The consequence is that we are less and less a free culture, more and
more a permission culture.
This change gets justified as necessary to protect commercial cre-

8 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 9

ativity. And indeed, protectionism is precisely its motivation. But the
protectionism that justifies the changes that I will describe below is not
the limited and balanced sort that has defined the law in the past. This
is not a protectionism to protect artists. It is instead a protectionism
to protect certain forms of business. Corporations threatened by the
potential of the Internet to change the way both commercial and
noncommercial culture are made and shared have united to induce
lawmakers to use the law to protect them. It is the story of RCA and
Armstrong; it is the dream of the Causbys.
For the Internet has unleashed an extraordinary possibility for many
to participate in the process of building and cultivating a culture that
reaches far beyond local boundaries. That power has changed the marketplace for making and cultivating culture generally, and that change
in turn threatens established content industries. The Internet is thus to
the industries that built and distributed content in the twentieth century what FM radio was to AM radio, or what the truck was to the
railroad industry of the nineteenth century: the beginning of the end,
or at least a substantial transformation. Digital technologies, tied to the
Internet, could produce a vastly more competitive and vibrant market
for building and cultivating culture; that market could include a much
wider and more diverse range of creators; those creators could produce
and distribute a much more vibrant range of creativity; and depending
upon a few important factors, those creators could earn more on average
from this system than creators do todayâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all so long as the RCAs of our
day donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t use the law to protect themselves against this competition.
Yet, as I argue in the pages that follow, that is precisely what is happening in our culture today. These modern-day equivalents of the early
twentieth-century radio or nineteenth-century railroads are using their
power to get the law to protect them against this new, more efficient,
more vibrant technology for building culture. They are succeeding in
their plan to remake the Internet before the Internet remakes them.
It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem this way to many. The battles over copyright and the

Internet seem remote to most. To the few who follow them, they seem
mainly about a much simpler brace of questions—whether “piracy” will
be permitted, and whether “property” will be protected. The “war” that
has been waged against the technologies of the Internet—what Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) president Jack Valenti
calls his “own terrorist war”10—has been framed as a battle about the
rule of law and respect for property. To know which side to take in this
war, most think that we need only decide whether we’re for property or
against it.
If those really were the choices, then I would be with Jack Valenti
and the content industry. I, too, am a believer in property, and especially in the importance of what Mr. Valenti nicely calls “creative property.” I believe that “piracy” is wrong, and that the law, properly tuned,
should punish “piracy,” whether on or off the Internet.
But those simple beliefs mask a much more fundamental question
and a much more dramatic change. My fear is that unless we come to see
this change, the war to rid the world of Internet “pirates” will also rid our
culture of values that have been integral to our tradition from the start.
These values built a tradition that, for at least the first 180 years of
our Republic, guaranteed creators the right to build freely upon their
past, and protected creators and innovators from either state or private
control. The First Amendment protected creators against state control.
And as Professor Neil Netanel powerfully argues,11 copyright law, properly balanced, protected creators against private control. Our tradition
was thus neither Soviet nor the tradition of patrons. It instead carved out
a wide berth within which creators could cultivate and extend our culture.
Yet the law’s response to the Internet, when tied to changes in the
technology of the Internet itself, has massively increased the effective
regulation of creativity in America. To build upon or critique the culture around us one must ask, Oliver Twist–like, for permission first.
Permission is, of course, often granted—but it is not often granted to
the critical or the independent. We have built a kind of cultural nobil-

10 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 11

ity; those within the noble class live easily; those outside it don’t. But it
is nobility of any form that is alien to our tradition.
The story that follows is about this war. Is it not about the “centrality of technology” to ordinary life. I don’t believe in gods, digital or
otherwise. Nor is it an effort to demonize any individual or group, for
neither do I believe in a devil, corporate or otherwise. It is not a morality tale. Nor is it a call to jihad against an industry.
It is instead an effort to understand a hopelessly destructive war inspired by the technologies of the Internet but reaching far beyond its
code. And by understanding this battle, it is an effort to map peace.
There is no good reason for the current struggle around Internet technologies to continue. There will be great harm to our tradition and
culture if it is allowed to continue unchecked. We must come to understand the source of this war. We must resolve it soon.

Like the Causbys’ battle, this war is, in part, about “property.”
The property of this war is not as tangible as the Causbys’, and no
innocent chicken has yet to lose its life. Yet the ideas surrounding this
“property” are as obvious to most as the Causbys’ claim about the sacredness of their farm was to them. We are the Causbys. Most of us
take for granted the extraordinarily powerful claims that the owners of
“intellectual property” now assert. Most of us, like the Causbys, treat
these claims as obvious. And hence we, like the Causbys, object when
a new technology interferes with this property. It is as plain to us as it
was to them that the new technologies of the Internet are “trespassing”
upon legitimate claims of “property.” It is as plain to us as it was to
them that the law should intervene to stop this trespass.
And thus, when geeks and technologists defend their Armstrong or
Wright brothers technology, most of us are simply unsympathetic. Common sense does not revolt. Unlike in the case of the unlucky Causbys,
common sense is on the side of the property owners in this war. Unlike

the lucky Wright brothers, the Internet has not inspired a revolution
on its side.
My hope is to push this common sense along. I have become increasingly amazed by the power of this idea of intellectual property
and, more importantly, its power to disable critical thought by policy
makers and citizens. There has never been a time in our history when
more of our “culture” was as “owned” as it is now. And yet there has
never been a time when the concentration of power to control the uses
of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as it is now.
The puzzle is, Why?
Is it because we have come to understand a truth about the value
and importance of absolute property over ideas and culture? Is it because we have discovered that our tradition of rejecting such an absolute claim was wrong?
Or is it because the idea of absolute property over ideas and culture
benefits the RCAs of our time and fits our own unreflective intuitions?
Is the radical shift away from our tradition of free culture an instance
of America correcting a mistake from its past, as we did after a bloody
war with slavery, and as we are slowly doing with inequality? Or is the
radical shift away from our tradition of free culture yet another example
of a political system captured by a few powerful special interests?
Does common sense lead to the extremes on this question because
common sense actually believes in these extremes? Or does common
sense stand silent in the face of these extremes because, as with Armstrong versus RCA, the more powerful side has ensured that it has the
more powerful view?
I don’t mean to be mysterious. My own views are resolved. I believe
it was right for common sense to revolt against the extremism of the
Causbys. I believe it would be right for common sense to revolt against
the extreme claims made today on behalf of “intellectual property.”
What the law demands today is increasingly as silly as a sheriff arresting an airplane for trespass. But the consequences of this silliness will
be much more profound.
12 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 13

The struggle that rages just now centers on two ideas: “piracy” and
“property.” My aim in this book’s next two parts is to explore these two
ideas.
My method is not the usual method of an academic. I don’t want to
plunge you into a complex argument, buttressed with references to obscure French theorists—however natural that is for the weird sort we
academics have become. Instead I begin in each part with a collection
of stories that set a context within which these apparently simple ideas
can be more fully understood.
The two sections set up the core claim of this book: that while the
Internet has indeed produced something fantastic and new, our government, pushed by big media to respond to this “something new,” is
destroying something very old. Rather than understanding the changes
the Internet might permit, and rather than taking time to let “common
sense” resolve how best to respond, we are allowing those most threatened by the changes to use their power to change the law—and more
importantly, to use their power to change something fundamental about
who we have always been.
We allow this, I believe, not because it is right, and not because
most of us really believe in these changes. We allow it because the interests most threatened are among the most powerful players in our
depressingly compromised process of making law. This book is the
story of one more consequence of this form of corruption—a consequence to which most of us remain oblivious.

Since the inception of the law regulating creative property, there
has been a war against “piracy.” The precise contours of this concept,
“piracy,” are hard to sketch, but the animating injustice is easy to capture. As Lord Mansfield wrote in a case that extended the reach of
English copyright law to include sheet music,
A person may use the copy by playing it, but he has no right to
rob the author of the profit, by multiplying copies and disposing
of them for his own use.1

Today we are in the middle of another “war” against “piracy.” The
Internet has provoked this war. The Internet makes possible the efficient spread of content. Peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing is among the
most efficient of the efficient technologies the Internet enables. Using
distributed intelligence, p2p systems facilitate the easy spread of content in a way unimagined a generation ago.

This efficiency does not respect the traditional lines of copyright.
The network doesn’t discriminate between the sharing of copyrighted
and uncopyrighted content. Thus has there been a vast amount of sharing of copyrighted content. That sharing in turn has excited the war, as
copyright owners fear the sharing will “rob the author of the profit.”
The warriors have turned to the courts, to the legislatures, and increasingly to technology to defend their “property” against this “piracy.”
A generation of Americans, the warriors warn, is being raised to believe that “property” should be “free.” Forget tattoos, never mind body
piercing—our kids are becoming thieves!
There’s no doubt that “piracy” is wrong, and that pirates should be
punished. But before we summon the executioners, we should put this
notion of “piracy” in some context. For as the concept is increasingly
used, at its core is an extraordinary idea that is almost certainly wrong.
The idea goes something like this:
Creative work has value; whenever I use, or take, or build upon
the creative work of others, I am taking from them something of
value. Whenever I take something of value from someone else, I
should have their permission. The taking of something of value
from someone else without permission is wrong. It is a form of
piracy.

This view runs deep within the current debates. It is what NYU law
professor Rochelle Dreyfuss criticizes as the “if value, then right” theory of creative property 2—if there is value, then someone must have a
right to that value. It is the perspective that led a composers’ rights organization, ASCAP, to sue the Girl Scouts for failing to pay for the
songs that girls sang around Girl Scout campfires.3 There was “value”
(the songs) so there must have been a “right”—even against the Girl
Scouts.
This idea is certainly a possible understanding of how creative
property should work. It might well be a possible design for a system
18 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 19

of law protecting creative property. But the “if value, then right” theory
of creative property has never been America’s theory of creative property. It has never taken hold within our law.
Instead, in our tradition, intellectual property is an instrument. It
sets the groundwork for a richly creative society but remains subservient to the value of creativity. The current debate has this turned
around. We have become so concerned with protecting the instrument
that we are losing sight of the value.
The source of this confusion is a distinction that the law no longer
takes care to draw—the distinction between republishing someone’s
work on the one hand and building upon or transforming that work on
the other. Copyright law at its birth had only publishing as its concern;
copyright law today regulates both.
Before the technologies of the Internet, this conflation didn’t matter all that much. The technologies of publishing were expensive; that
meant the vast majority of publishing was commercial. Commercial
entities could bear the burden of the law—even the burden of the
Byzantine complexity that copyright law has become. It was just one
more expense of doing business.
But with the birth of the Internet, this natural limit to the reach of
the law has disappeared. The law controls not just the creativity of
commercial creators but effectively that of anyone. Although that expansion would not matter much if copyright law regulated only “copying,” when the law regulates as broadly and obscurely as it does, the
extension matters a lot. The burden of this law now vastly outweighs
any original benefit—certainly as it affects noncommercial creativity,
and increasingly as it affects commercial creativity as well. Thus, as
we’ll see more clearly in the chapters below, the law’s role is less and
less to support creativity, and more and more to protect certain industries against competition. Just at the time digital technology could
unleash an extraordinary range of commercial and noncommercial
creativity, the law burdens this creativity with insanely complex and
vague rules and with the threat of obscenely severe penalties. We may
“PIRACY” 19

be seeing, as Richard Florida writes, the “Rise of the Creative Class.”4
Unfortunately, we are also seeing an extraordinary rise of regulation of
this creative class.
These burdens make no sense in our tradition. We should begin by
understanding that tradition a bit more and by placing in their proper
context the current battles about behavior labeled “piracy.”

20 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 21

CHAPTER ONE:

Creators

In 1928, a cartoon character was born. An early Mickey Mouse
made his debut in May of that year, in a silent flop called Plane Crazy.
In November, in New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Colony Theater, in the first widely
distributed cartoon synchronized with sound, Steamboat Willie brought
to life the character that would become Mickey Mouse.
Synchronized sound had been introduced to film a year earlier in
the movie The Jazz Singer. That success led Walt Disney to copy the
technique and mix sound with cartoons. No one knew whether it
would work or, if it did work, whether it would win an audience. But
when Disney ran a test in the summer of 1928, the results were unambiguous. As Disney describes that first experiment,
A couple of my boys could read music, and one of them could play
a mouth organ. We put them in a room where they could not see
the screen and arranged to pipe their sound into the room where
our wives and friends were going to see the picture.

The boys worked from a music and sound-effects score. After
several false starts, sound and action got off with the gun. The
mouth organist played the tune, the rest of us in the sound department bammed tin pans and blew slide whistles on the beat.
The synchronization was pretty close.
The effect on our little audience was nothing less than electric. They responded almost instinctively to this union of sound
and motion. I thought they were kidding me. So they put me in
the audience and ran the action again. It was terrible, but it was
wonderful! And it was something new!1

Disney’s then partner, and one of animation’s most extraordinary
talents, Ub Iwerks, put it more strongly: “I have never been so thrilled
in my life. Nothing since has ever equaled it.”
Disney had created something very new, based upon something relatively new. Synchronized sound brought life to a form of creativity
that had rarely—except in Disney’s hands—been anything more than
filler for other films. Throughout animation’s early history, it was Disney’s invention that set the standard that others struggled to match.
And quite often, Disney’s great genius, his spark of creativity, was built
upon the work of others.
This much is familiar. What you might not know is that 1928 also
marks another important transition. In that year, a comic (as opposed
to cartoon) genius created his last independently produced silent film.
That genius was Buster Keaton. The film was Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Keaton was born into a vaudeville family in 1895. In the era of
silent film, he had mastered using broad physical comedy as a way to
spark uncontrollable laughter from his audience. Steamboat Bill, Jr. was
a classic of this form, famous among film buffs for its incredible stunts.
The film was classic Keaton—wildly popular and among the best of its
genre.
Steamboat Bill, Jr. appeared before Disney’s cartoon Steamboat Willie.
The coincidence of titles is not coincidental. Steamboat Willie is a di22 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 23

rect cartoon parody of Steamboat Bill,2 and both are built upon a common song as a source. It is not just from the invention of synchronized
sound in The Jazz Singer that we get Steamboat Willie. It is also from
Buster Keaton’s invention of Steamboat Bill, Jr., itself inspired by the
song “Steamboat Bill,” that we get Steamboat Willie, and then from
Steamboat Willie, Mickey Mouse.
This “borrowing” was nothing unique, either for Disney or for the
industry. Disney was always parroting the feature-length mainstream
films of his day.3 So did many others. Early cartoons are filled with
knockoffs—slight variations on winning themes; retellings of ancient
stories. The key to success was the brilliance of the differences. With
Disney, it was sound that gave his animation its spark. Later, it was the
quality of his work relative to the production-line cartoons with which
he competed. Yet these additions were built upon a base that was borrowed. Disney added to the work of others before him, creating something new out of something just barely old.
Sometimes this borrowing was slight. Sometimes it was significant.
Think about the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. If you’re as oblivious as I was, you’re likely to think that these tales are happy, sweet stories, appropriate for any child at bedtime. In fact, the Grimm fairy tales
are, well, for us, grim. It is a rare and perhaps overly ambitious parent
who would dare to read these bloody, moralistic stories to his or her
child, at bedtime or anytime.
Disney took these stories and retold them in a way that carried
them into a new age. He animated the stories, with both characters and
light. Without removing the elements of fear and danger altogether, he
made funny what was dark and injected a genuine emotion of compassion where before there was fear. And not just with the work of the
Brothers Grimm. Indeed, the catalog of Disney work drawing upon
the work of others is astonishing when set together: Snow White
(1937), Fantasia (1940), Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), Bambi
(1942), Song of the South (1946), Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland
(1951), Robin Hood (1952), Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp
“PIRACY” 23

(1955), Mulan (1998), Sleeping Beauty (1959), 101 Dalmatians (1961),
The Sword in the Stone (1963), and The Jungle Book (1967)—not to
mention a recent example that we should perhaps quickly forget, Treasure Planet (2003). In all of these cases, Disney (or Disney, Inc.) ripped
creativity from the culture around him, mixed that creativity with his
own extraordinary talent, and then burned that mix into the soul of his
culture. Rip, mix, and burn.
This is a kind of creativity. It is a creativity that we should remember and celebrate. There are some who would say that there is no creativity except this kind. We don’t need to go that far to recognize its
importance. We could call this “Disney creativity,” though that would
be a bit misleading. It is, more precisely, “Walt Disney creativity”—a
form of expression and genius that builds upon the culture around us
and makes it something different.
In 1928, the culture that Disney was free to draw upon was relatively fresh. The public domain in 1928 was not very old and was
therefore quite vibrant. The average term of copyright was just around
thirty years—for that minority of creative work that was in fact copyrighted.4 That means that for thirty years, on average, the authors or
copyright holders of a creative work had an “exclusive right” to control
certain uses of the work. To use this copyrighted work in limited ways
required the permission of the copyright owner.
At the end of a copyright term, a work passes into the public domain. No permission is then needed to draw upon or use that work. No
permission and, hence, no lawyers. The public domain is a “lawyer-free
zone.” Thus, most of the content from the nineteenth century was free
for Disney to use and build upon in 1928. It was free for anyone—
whether connected or not, whether rich or not, whether approved or
not—to use and build upon.
This is the ways things always were—until quite recently. For most
of our history, the public domain was just over the horizon. From 1790
until 1978, the average copyright term was never more than thirty-two
years, meaning that most culture just a generation and a half old was
24 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 25

free for anyone to build upon without the permission of anyone else.
Today’s equivalent would be for creative work from the 1960s and
1970s to now be free for the next Walt Disney to build upon without
permission. Yet today, the public domain is presumptive only for content from before the Great Depression.

Of course, Walt Disney had no monopoly on “Walt Disney creativity.” Nor does America. The norm of free culture has, until recently,
and except within totalitarian nations, been broadly exploited and quite
universal.
Consider, for example, a form of creativity that seems strange to
many Americans but that is inescapable within Japanese culture:
manga, or comics. The Japanese are fanatics about comics. Some 40
percent of publications are comics, and 30 percent of publication revenue derives from comics. They are everywhere in Japanese society, at
every magazine stand, carried by a large proportion of commuters on
Japan’s extraordinary system of public transportation.
Americans tend to look down upon this form of culture. That’s an
unattractive characteristic of ours. We’re likely to misunderstand much
about manga, because few of us have ever read anything close to the
stories that these “graphic novels” tell. For the Japanese, manga cover
every aspect of social life. For us, comics are “men in tights.” And anyway, it’s not as if the New York subways are filled with readers of Joyce
or even Hemingway. People of different cultures distract themselves in
different ways, the Japanese in this interestingly different way.
But my purpose here is not to understand manga. It is to describe a
variant on manga that from a lawyer’s perspective is quite odd, but
from a Disney perspective is quite familiar.
This is the phenomenon of doujinshi. Doujinshi are also comics, but
they are a kind of copycat comic. A rich ethic governs the creation of
doujinshi. It is not doujinshi if it is just a copy; the artist must make a
contribution to the art he copies, by transforming it either subtly or
“PIRACY” 25

significantly. A doujinshi comic can thus take a mainstream comic and
develop it differently—with a different story line. Or the comic can
keep the character in character but change its look slightly. There is no
formula for what makes the doujinshi sufficiently “different.” But they
must be different if they are to be considered true doujinshi. Indeed,
there are committees that review doujinshi for inclusion within shows
and reject any copycat comic that is merely a copy.
These copycat comics are not a tiny part of the manga market. They
are huge. More than 33,000 “circles” of creators from across Japan produce these bits of Walt Disney creativity. More than 450,000 Japanese
come together twice a year, in the largest public gathering in the country, to exchange and sell them. This market exists in parallel to the
mainstream commercial manga market. In some ways, it obviously
competes with that market, but there is no sustained effort by those
who control the commercial manga market to shut the doujinshi market down. It flourishes, despite the competition and despite the law.
The most puzzling feature of the doujinshi market, for those
trained in the law, at least, is that it is allowed to exist at all. Under
Japanese copyright law, which in this respect (on paper) mirrors American copyright law, the doujinshi market is an illegal one. Doujinshi are
plainly “derivative works.” There is no general practice by doujinshi
artists of securing the permission of the manga creators. Instead, the
practice is simply to take and modify the creations of others, as Walt
Disney did with Steamboat Bill, Jr. Under both Japanese and American
law, that “taking” without the permission of the original copyright
owner is illegal. It is an infringement of the original copyright to make
a copy or a derivative work without the original copyright owner’s
permission.
Yet this illegal market exists and indeed flourishes in Japan, and in
the view of many, it is precisely because it exists that Japanese manga
flourish. As American graphic novelist Judd Winick said to me, “The
early days of comics in America are very much like what’s going on
in Japan now. . . . American comics were born out of copying each
26 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 27

other. . . . That’s how [the artists] learn to draw—by going into comic
books and not tracing them, but looking at them and copying them”
and building from them.5
American comics now are quite different, Winick explains, in part
because of the legal difficulty of adapting comics the way doujinshi are
allowed. Speaking of Superman, Winick told me, “there are these rules
and you have to stick to them.” There are things Superman “cannot”
do. “As a creator, it’s frustrating having to stick to some parameters
which are fifty years old.”
The norm in Japan mitigates this legal difficulty. Some say it is precisely the benefit accruing to the Japanese manga market that explains
the mitigation. Temple University law professor Salil Mehra, for example, hypothesizes that the manga market accepts these technical
violations because they spur the manga market to be more wealthy and
productive. Everyone would be worse off if doujinshi were banned, so
the law does not ban doujinshi.6
The problem with this story, however, as Mehra plainly acknowledges, is that the mechanism producing this laissez faire response is not
clear. It may well be that the market as a whole is better off if doujinshi are permitted rather than banned, but that doesn’t explain why individual copyright owners don’t sue nonetheless. If the law has no
general exception for doujinshi, and indeed in some cases individual
manga artists have sued doujinshi artists, why is there not a more general pattern of blocking this “free taking” by the doujinshi culture?
I spent four wonderful months in Japan, and I asked this question
as often as I could. Perhaps the best account in the end was offered by
a friend from a major Japanese law firm. “We don’t have enough
lawyers,” he told me one afternoon. There “just aren’t enough resources
to prosecute cases like this.”
This is a theme to which we will return: that regulation by law is a
function of both the words on the books and the costs of making those
words have effect. For now, focus on the obvious question that is
begged: Would Japan be better off with more lawyers? Would manga
“PIRACY” 27

be richer if doujinshi artists were regularly prosecuted? Would the
Japanese gain something important if they could end this practice of
uncompensated sharing? Does piracy here hurt the victims of the
piracy, or does it help them? Would lawyers fighting this piracy help
their clients or hurt them?

Let’s pause for a moment.
If you’re like I was a decade ago, or like most people are when they
first start thinking about these issues, then just about now you should
be puzzled about something you hadn’t thought through before.
We live in a world that celebrates “property.” I am one of those celebrants. I believe in the value of property in general, and I also believe
in the value of that weird form of property that lawyers call “intellectual property.”7 A large, diverse society cannot survive without property; a large, diverse, and modern society cannot flourish without
intellectual property.
But it takes just a second’s reflection to realize that there is plenty of
value out there that “property” doesn’t capture. I don’t mean “money
can’t buy you love,” but rather, value that is plainly part of a process of
production, including commercial as well as noncommercial production. If Disney animators had stolen a set of pencils to draw Steamboat
Willie, we’d have no hesitation in condemning that taking as wrong—
even though trivial, even if unnoticed. Yet there was nothing wrong, at
least under the law of the day, with Disney’s taking from Buster Keaton
or from the Brothers Grimm. There was nothing wrong with the taking from Keaton because Disney’s use would have been considered
“fair.” There was nothing wrong with the taking from the Grimms because the Grimms’ work was in the public domain.
Thus, even though the things that Disney took—or more generally,
the things taken by anyone exercising Walt Disney creativity—are
valuable, our tradition does not treat those takings as wrong. Some

28 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 29

things remain free for the taking within a free culture, and that freedom is good.
The same with the doujinshi culture. If a doujinshi artist broke into
a publisher’s office and ran off with a thousand copies of his latest
work—or even one copy—without paying, we’d have no hesitation in
saying the artist was wrong. In addition to having trespassed, he would
have stolen something of value. The law bans that stealing in whatever
form, whether large or small.
Yet there is an obvious reluctance, even among Japanese lawyers, to
say that the copycat comic artists are “stealing.” This form of Walt Disney creativity is seen as fair and right, even if lawyers in particular find
it hard to say why.
It’s the same with a thousand examples that appear everywhere once
you begin to look. Scientists build upon the work of other scientists
without asking or paying for the privilege. (“Excuse me, Professor Einstein, but may I have permission to use your theory of relativity to show
that you were wrong about quantum physics?”) Acting companies perform adaptations of the works of Shakespeare without securing permission from anyone. (Does anyone believe Shakespeare would be
better spread within our culture if there were a central Shakespeare
rights clearinghouse that all productions of Shakespeare must appeal
to first?) And Hollywood goes through cycles with a certain kind of
movie: five asteroid films in the late 1990s; two volcano disaster films
in 1997.
Creators here and everywhere are always and at all times building
upon the creativity that went before and that surrounds them now.
That building is always and everywhere at least partially done without
permission and without compensating the original creator. No society,
free or controlled, has ever demanded that every use be paid for or that
permission for Walt Disney creativity must always be sought. Instead,
every society has left a certain bit of its culture free for the taking—free
societies more fully than unfree, perhaps, but all societies to some degree.

The hard question is therefore not whether a culture is free. All cultures are free to some degree. The hard question instead is â&#x20AC;&#x153;How free is
this culture?â&#x20AC;? How much, and how broadly, is the culture free for others to take and build upon? Is that freedom limited to party members?
To members of the royal family? To the top ten corporations on the
New York Stock Exchange? Or is that freedom spread broadly? To
artists generally, whether affiliated with the Met or not? To musicians
generally, whether white or not? To filmmakers generally, whether affiliated with a studio or not?
Free cultures are cultures that leave a great deal open for others to
build upon; unfree, or permission, cultures leave much less. Ours was a
free culture. It is becoming much less so.

30 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 31

CHAPTER TWO:

“Mere Copyists”

In 1839, Louis Daguerre invented the first practical technology for
producing what we would call “photographs.” Appropriately enough,
they were called “daguerreotypes.” The process was complicated and
expensive, and the field was thus limited to professionals and a few
zealous and wealthy amateurs. (There was even an American Daguerre
Association that helped regulate the industry, as do all such associations, by keeping competition down so as to keep prices up.)
Yet despite high prices, the demand for daguerreotypes was strong.
This pushed inventors to find simpler and cheaper ways to make “automatic pictures.” William Talbot soon discovered a process for making “negatives.” But because the negatives were glass, and had to be
kept wet, the process still remained expensive and cumbersome. In the
1870s, dry plates were developed, making it easier to separate the taking of a picture from its developing. These were still plates of glass, and
thus it was still not a process within reach of most amateurs.
The technological change that made mass photography possible
didn’t happen until 1888, and was the creation of a single man. George
31

Eastman, himself an amateur photographer, was frustrated by the
technology of photographs made with plates. In a flash of insight (so
to speak), Eastman saw that if the film could be made to be flexible, it
could be held on a single spindle. That roll could then be sent to a developer, driving the costs of photography down substantially. By lowering the costs, Eastman expected he could dramatically broaden the
population of photographers.
Eastman developed flexible, emulsion-coated paper film and placed
rolls of it in small, simple cameras: the Kodak. The device was marketed on the basis of its simplicity. “You press the button and we do the
rest.”1 As he described in The Kodak Primer:
The principle of the Kodak system is the separation of the work
that any person whomsoever can do in making a photograph,
from the work that only an expert can do. . . . We furnish anybody, man, woman or child, who has sufficient intelligence to
point a box straight and press a button, with an instrument which
altogether removes from the practice of photography the necessity for exceptional facilities or, in fact, any special knowledge of
the art. It can be employed without preliminary study, without a
darkroom and without chemicals.2

For $25, anyone could make pictures. The camera came preloaded
with film, and when it had been used, the camera was returned to an
Eastman factory, where the film was developed. Over time, of course,
the cost of the camera and the ease with which it could be used both
improved. Roll film thus became the basis for the explosive growth of
popular photography. Eastman’s camera first went on sale in 1888; one
year later, Kodak was printing more than six thousand negatives a day.
From 1888 through 1909, while industrial production was rising by 4.7
percent, photographic equipment and material sales increased by 11
percent.3 Eastman Kodak’s sales during the same period experienced
an average annual increase of over 17 percent.4
32 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 33

The real significance of Eastman’s invention, however, was not
economic. It was social. Professional photography gave individuals a
glimpse of places they would never otherwise see. Amateur photography gave them the ability to record their own lives in a way they had
never been able to do before. As author Brian Coe notes, “For the first
time the snapshot album provided the man on the street with a permanent record of his family and its activities. . . . For the first time in
history there exists an authentic visual record of the appearance and activities of the common man made without [literary] interpretation
or bias.”5
In this way, the Kodak camera and film were technologies of expression. The pencil or paintbrush was also a technology of expression,
of course. But it took years of training before they could be deployed by
amateurs in any useful or effective way. With the Kodak, expression
was possible much sooner and more simply. The barrier to expression
was lowered. Snobs would sneer at its “quality”; professionals would
discount it as irrelevant. But watch a child study how best to frame a
picture and you get a sense of the experience of creativity that the Kodak enabled. Democratic tools gave ordinary people a way to express
themselves more easily than any tools could have before.
What was required for this technology to flourish? Obviously,
Eastman’s genius was an important part. But also important was the legal environment within which Eastman’s invention grew. For early in
the history of photography, there was a series of judicial decisions that
could well have changed the course of photography substantially.
Courts were asked whether the photographer, amateur or professional,
required permission before he could capture and print whatever image
he wanted. Their answer was no.6
The arguments in favor of requiring permission will sound surprisingly familiar. The photographer was “taking” something from the person or building whose photograph he shot—pirating something of
value. Some even thought he was taking the target’s soul. Just as Disney was not free to take the pencils that his animators used to draw
“PIRACY” 33

Mickey, so, too, should these photographers not be free to take images
that they thought valuable.
On the other side was an argument that should be familiar, as well.
Sure, there may be something of value being used. But citizens should
have the right to capture at least those images that stand in public view.
(Louis Brandeis, who would become a Supreme Court Justice, thought
the rule should be different for images from private spaces.7) It may be
that this means that the photographer gets something for nothing. Just
as Disney could take inspiration from Steamboat Bill, Jr. or the Brothers Grimm, the photographer should be free to capture an image without compensating the source.
Fortunately for Mr. Eastman, and for photography in general, these
early decisions went in favor of the pirates. In general, no permission
would be required before an image could be captured and shared with
others. Instead, permission was presumed. Freedom was the default.
(The law would eventually craft an exception for famous people: commercial photographers who snap pictures of famous people for commercial purposes have more restrictions than the rest of us. But in the
ordinary case, the image can be captured without clearing the rights to
do the capturing.8)
We can only speculate about how photography would have developed had the law gone the other way. If the presumption had been
against the photographer, then the photographer would have had to
demonstrate permission. Perhaps Eastman Kodak would have had to
demonstrate permission, too, before it developed the film upon which
images were captured. After all, if permission were not granted, then
Eastman Kodak would be benefiting from the “theft” committed by
the photographer. Just as Napster benefited from the copyright infringements committed by Napster users, Kodak would be benefiting
from the “image-right” infringement of its photographers. We could
imagine the law then requiring that some form of permission be
demonstrated before a company developed pictures. We could imagine
a system developing to demonstrate that permission.
34 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 35

But though we could imagine this system of permission, it would
be very hard to see how photography could have flourished as it did if
the requirement for permission had been built into the rules that govern it. Photography would have existed. It would have grown in importance over time. Professionals would have continued to use the
technology as they did—since professionals could have more easily borne
the burdens of the permission system. But the spread of photography
to ordinary people would not have occurred. Nothing like that growth
would have been realized. And certainly, nothing like that growth in a
democratic technology of expression would have been realized.

If you drive through San Francisco’s Presidio, you might see two
gaudy yellow school buses painted over with colorful and striking images, and the logo “Just Think!” in place of the name of a school. But
there’s little that’s “just” cerebral in the projects that these busses enable. These buses are filled with technologies that teach kids to tinker
with film. Not the film of Eastman. Not even the film of your VCR.
Rather the “film” of digital cameras. Just Think! is a project that enables kids to make films, as a way to understand and critique the filmed
culture that they find all around them. Each year, these busses travel to
more than thirty schools and enable three hundred to five hundred
children to learn something about media by doing something with media. By doing, they think. By tinkering, they learn.
These buses are not cheap, but the technology they carry is increasingly so. The cost of a high-quality digital video system has fallen dramatically. As one analyst puts it, “Five years ago, a good real-time
digital video editing system cost $25,000. Today you can get professional quality for $595.”9 These buses are filled with technology that
would have cost hundreds of thousands just ten years ago. And it is
now feasible to imagine not just buses like this, but classrooms across
the country where kids are learning more and more of something
teachers call “media literacy.”
“PIRACY” 35

“Media literacy,” as Dave Yanofsky, the executive director of Just
Think!, puts it, “is the ability . . . to understand, analyze, and deconstruct media images. Its aim is to make [kids] literate about the way
media works, the way it’s constructed, the way it’s delivered, and the
way people access it.”
This may seem like an odd way to think about “literacy.” For most
people, literacy is about reading and writing. Faulkner and Hemingway
and noticing split infinitives are the things that “literate” people know
about.
Maybe. But in a world where children see on average 390 hours of
television commercials per year, or between 20,000 and 45,000 commercials generally,10 it is increasingly important to understand the
“grammar” of media. For just as there is a grammar for the written
word, so, too, is there one for media. And just as kids learn how to write
by writing lots of terrible prose, kids learn how to write media by constructing lots of (at least at first) terrible media.
A growing field of academics and activists sees this form of literacy
as crucial to the next generation of culture. For though anyone who has
written understands how difficult writing is—how difficult it is to sequence the story, to keep a reader’s attention, to craft language to be
understandable—few of us have any real sense of how difficult media
is. Or more fundamentally, few of us have a sense of how media works,
how it holds an audience or leads it through a story, how it triggers
emotion or builds suspense.
It took filmmaking a generation before it could do these things well.
But even then, the knowledge was in the filming, not in writing about
the film. The skill came from experiencing the making of a film, not
from reading a book about it. One learns to write by writing and then
reflecting upon what one has written. One learns to write with images
by making them and then reflecting upon what one has created.
This grammar has changed as media has changed. When it was just
film, as Elizabeth Daley, executive director of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Communication and dean of the
36 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 37

USC School of Cinema-Television, explained to me, the grammar was
about “the placement of objects, color, . . . rhythm, pacing, and texture.”11 But as computers open up an interactive space where a story is
“played” as well as experienced, that grammar changes. The simple
control of narrative is lost, and so other techniques are necessary. Author Michael Crichton had mastered the narrative of science fiction.
But when he tried to design a computer game based on one of his
works, it was a new craft he had to learn. How to lead people through
a game without their feeling they have been led was not obvious, even
to a wildly successful author.12
This skill is precisely the craft a filmmaker learns. As Daley describes, “people are very surprised about how they are led through a
film. [I]t is perfectly constructed to keep you from seeing it, so you
have no idea. If a filmmaker succeeds you do not know how you were
led.” If you know you were led through a film, the film has failed.
Yet the push for an expanded literacy—one that goes beyond text to
include audio and visual elements—is not about making better film directors. The aim is not to improve the profession of filmmaking at all.
Instead, as Daley explained,
From my perspective, probably the most important digital divide
is not access to a box. It’s the ability to be empowered with the
language that that box works in. Otherwise only a very few people
can write with this language, and all the rest of us are reduced to
being read-only.

“Read-only.” Passive recipients of culture produced elsewhere.
Couch potatoes. Consumers. This is the world of media from the
twentieth century.
The twenty-first century could be different. This is the crucial point:
It could be both read and write. Or at least reading and better understanding the craft of writing. Or best, reading and understanding the
tools that enable the writing to lead or mislead. The aim of any literacy,
“PIRACY” 37

and this literacy in particular, is to “empower people to choose the appropriate language for what they need to create or express.”13 It is to enable
students “to communicate in the language of the twenty-first century.”14
As with any language, this language comes more easily to some
than to others. It doesn’t necessarily come more easily to those who excel in written language. Daley and Stephanie Barish, director of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at the Annenberg Center, describe one
particularly poignant example of a project they ran in a high school.
The high school was a very poor inner-city Los Angeles school. In all
the traditional measures of success, this school was a failure. But Daley
and Barish ran a program that gave kids an opportunity to use film
to express meaning about something the students know something
about—gun violence.
The class was held on Friday afternoons, and it created a relatively
new problem for the school. While the challenge in most classes was
getting the kids to come, the challenge in this class was keeping them
away. The “kids were showing up at 6 A.M. and leaving at 5 at night,”
said Barish. They were working harder than in any other class to do
what education should be about—learning how to express themselves.
Using whatever “free web stuff they could find,” and relatively simple tools to enable the kids to mix “image, sound, and text,” Barish said
this class produced a series of projects that showed something about
gun violence that few would otherwise understand. This was an issue
close to the lives of these students. The project “gave them a tool and
empowered them to be able to both understand it and talk about it,”
Barish explained. That tool succeeded in creating expression—far more
successfully and powerfully than could have been created using only
text. “If you had said to these students, ‘you have to do it in text,’ they
would’ve just thrown their hands up and gone and done something
else,” Barish described, in part, no doubt, because expressing themselves in text is not something these students can do well. Yet neither
is text a form in which these ideas can be expressed well. The power of
this message depended upon its connection to this form of expression.
38 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 39

“But isn’t education about teaching kids to write?” I asked. In part,
of course, it is. But why are we teaching kids to write? Education, Daley explained, is about giving students a way of “constructing meaning.” To say that that means just writing is like saying teaching writing
is only about teaching kids how to spell. Text is one part—and increasingly, not the most powerful part—of constructing meaning. As Daley
explained in the most moving part of our interview,
What you want is to give these students ways of constructing
meaning. If all you give them is text, they’re not going to do it.
Because they can’t. You know, you’ve got Johnny who can look at
a video, he can play a video game, he can do graffiti all over your
walls, he can take your car apart, and he can do all sorts of other
things. He just can’t read your text. So Johnny comes to school
and you say, “Johnny, you’re illiterate. Nothing you can do matters.” Well, Johnny then has two choices: He can dismiss you or
he [can] dismiss himself. If his ego is healthy at all, he’s going to
dismiss you. [But i]nstead, if you say, “Well, with all these things
that you can do, let’s talk about this issue. Play for me music that
you think reflects that, or show me images that you think reflect
that, or draw for me something that reflects that.” Not by giving
a kid a video camera and . . . saying, “Let’s go have fun with the
video camera and make a little movie.” But instead, really help
you take these elements that you understand, that are your language, and construct meaning about the topic. . . .
That empowers enormously. And then what happens, of
course, is eventually, as it has happened in all these classes, they
bump up against the fact, “I need to explain this and I really need
to write something.” And as one of the teachers told Stephanie,
they would rewrite a paragraph 5, 6, 7, 8 times, till they got it right.
Because they needed to. There was a reason for doing it. They
needed to say something, as opposed to just jumping through
your hoops. They actually needed to use a language that they
“PIRACY” 39

didn’t speak very well. But they had come to understand that they
had a lot of power with this language.”

When two planes crashed into the World Trade Center, another into
the Pentagon, and a fourth into a Pennsylvania field, all media around
the world shifted to this news. Every moment of just about every day for
that week, and for weeks after, television in particular, and media generally, retold the story of the events we had just witnessed. The telling was
a retelling, because we had seen the events that were described. The genius of this awful act of terrorism was that the delayed second attack was
perfectly timed to assure that the whole world would be watching.
These retellings had an increasingly familiar feel. There was music
scored for the intermissions, and fancy graphics that flashed across the
screen. There was a formula to interviews. There was “balance,” and
seriousness. This was news choreographed in the way we have increasingly come to expect it, “news as entertainment,” even if the entertainment is tragedy.
But in addition to this produced news about the “tragedy of September 11,” those of us tied to the Internet came to see a very different
production as well. The Internet was filled with accounts of the same
events. Yet these Internet accounts had a very different flavor. Some
people constructed photo pages that captured images from around the
world and presented them as slide shows with text. Some offered open
letters. There were sound recordings. There was anger and frustration.
There were attempts to provide context. There was, in short, an extraordinary worldwide barn raising, in the sense Mike Godwin uses
the term in his book Cyber Rights, around a news event that had captured the attention of the world. There was ABC and CBS, but there
was also the Internet.
I don’t mean simply to praise the Internet—though I do think the
people who supported this form of speech should be praised. I mean
instead to point to a significance in this form of speech. For like a Kodak, the Internet enables people to capture images. And like in a movie
40 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 41

by a student on the “Just Think!” bus, the visual images could be mixed
with sound or text.
But unlike any technology for simply capturing images, the Internet allows these creations to be shared with an extraordinary number of
people, practically instantaneously. This is something new in our tradition—not just that culture can be captured mechanically, and obviously
not just that events are commented upon critically, but that this mix of
captured images, sound, and commentary can be widely spread practically instantaneously.
September 11 was not an aberration. It was a beginning. Around
the same time, a form of communication that has grown dramatically
was just beginning to come into public consciousness: the Web-log, or
blog. The blog is a kind of public diary, and within some cultures, such
as in Japan, it functions very much like a diary. In those cultures, it
records private facts in a public way—it’s a kind of electronic Jerry
Springer, available anywhere in the world.
But in the United States, blogs have taken on a very different character. There are some who use the space simply to talk about their private life. But there are many who use the space to engage in public
discourse. Discussing matters of public import, criticizing others who
are mistaken in their views, criticizing politicians about the decisions
they make, offering solutions to problems we all see: blogs create the
sense of a virtual public meeting, but one in which we don’t all hope to
be there at the same time and in which conversations are not necessarily linked. The best of the blog entries are relatively short; they point
directly to words used by others, criticizing with or adding to them.
They are arguably the most important form of unchoreographed public discourse that we have.
That’s a strong statement. Yet it says as much about our democracy
as it does about blogs. This is the part of America that is most difficult
for those of us who love America to accept: Our democracy has atrophied. Of course we have elections, and most of the time the courts allow those elections to count. A relatively small number of people vote
“PIRACY” 41

in those elections. The cycle of these elections has become totally professionalized and routinized. Most of us think this is democracy.
But democracy has never just been about elections. Democracy
means rule by the people, but rule means something more than mere
elections. In our tradition, it also means control through reasoned discourse. This was the idea that captured the imagination of Alexis de
Tocqueville, the nineteenth-century French lawyer who wrote the
most important account of early “Democracy in America.” It wasn’t
popular elections that fascinated him—it was the jury, an institution
that gave ordinary people the right to choose life or death for other citizens. And most fascinating for him was that the jury didn’t just vote
about the outcome they would impose. They deliberated. Members argued about the “right” result; they tried to persuade each other of the
“right” result, and in criminal cases at least, they had to agree upon a
unanimous result for the process to come to an end.15
Yet even this institution flags in American life today. And in its
place, there is no systematic effort to enable citizen deliberation. Some
are pushing to create just such an institution.16 And in some towns in
New England, something close to deliberation remains. But for most
of us for most of the time, there is no time or place for “democratic deliberation” to occur.
More bizarrely, there is generally not even permission for it to occur. We, the most powerful democracy in the world, have developed a
strong norm against talking about politics. It’s fine to talk about politics with people you agree with. But it is rude to argue about politics
with people you disagree with. Political discourse becomes isolated,
and isolated discourse becomes more extreme.17 We say what our
friends want to hear, and hear very little beyond what our friends say.
Enter the blog. The blog’s very architecture solves one part of this
problem. People post when they want to post, and people read when
they want to read. The most difficult time is synchronous time. Technologies that enable asynchronous communication, such as e-mail,
increase the opportunity for communication. Blogs allow for public
42 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 43

discourse without the public ever needing to gather in a single public
place.
But beyond architecture, blogs also have solved the problem of
norms. There’s no norm (yet) in blog space not to talk about politics.
Indeed, the space is filled with political speech, on both the right and
the left. Some of the most popular sites are conservative or libertarian,
but there are many of all political stripes. And even blogs that are not
political cover political issues when the occasion merits.
The significance of these blogs is tiny now, though not so tiny. The
name Howard Dean may well have faded from the 2004 presidential
race but for blogs. Yet even if the number of readers is small, the reading is having an effect.
One direct effect is on stories that had a different life cycle in the
mainstream media. The Trent Lott affair is an example. When Lott
“misspoke” at a party for Senator Strom Thurmond, essentially praising Thurmond’s segregationist policies, he calculated correctly that this
story would disappear from the mainstream press within forty-eight
hours. It did. But he didn’t calculate its life cycle in blog space. The
bloggers kept researching the story. Over time, more and more instances of the same “misspeaking” emerged. Finally, the story broke
back into the mainstream press. In the end, Lott was forced to resign
as senate majority leader.18
This different cycle is possible because the same commercial pressures don’t exist with blogs as with other ventures. Television and
newspapers are commercial entities. They must work to keep attention.
If they lose readers, they lose revenue. Like sharks, they must move on.
But bloggers don’t have a similar constraint. They can obsess, they
can focus, they can get serious. If a particular blogger writes a particularly interesting story, more and more people link to that story. And as
the number of links to a particular story increases, it rises in the ranks
of stories. People read what is popular; what is popular has been selected by a very democratic process of peer-generated rankings.
There’s a second way, as well, in which blogs have a different cycle
“PIRACY” 43

from the mainstream press. As Dave Winer, one of the fathers of this
movement and a software author for many decades, told me, another
difference is the absence of a financial “conflict of interest.” “I think you
have to take the conflict of interest” out of journalism, Winer told me.
“An amateur journalist simply doesn’t have a conflict of interest, or the
conflict of interest is so easily disclosed that you know you can sort of
get it out of the way.”
These conflicts become more important as media becomes more
concentrated (more on this below). A concentrated media can hide
more from the public than an unconcentrated media can—as CNN
admitted it did after the Iraq war because it was afraid of the consequences to its own employees.19 It also needs to sustain a more coherent account. (In the middle of the Iraq war, I read a post on the
Internet from someone who was at that time listening to a satellite uplink with a reporter in Iraq. The New York headquarters was telling the
reporter over and over that her account of the war was too bleak: She
needed to offer a more optimistic story. When she told New York that
wasn’t warranted, they told her that they were writing “the story.”)
Blog space gives amateurs a way to enter the debate—“amateur” not
in the sense of inexperienced, but in the sense of an Olympic athlete,
meaning not paid by anyone to give their reports. It allows for a much
broader range of input into a story, as reporting on the Columbia disaster revealed, when hundreds from across the southwest United States
turned to the Internet to retell what they had seen.20 And it drives
readers to read across the range of accounts and “triangulate,” as Winer
puts it, the truth. Blogs, Winer says, are “communicating directly with
our constituency, and the middle man is out of it”—with all the benefits, and costs, that might entail.
Winer is optimistic about the future of journalism infected with
blogs. “It’s going to become an essential skill,” Winer predicts, for public figures and increasingly for private figures as well. It’s not clear that
“journalism” is happy about this—some journalists have been told to
curtail their blogging.21 But it is clear that we are still in transition. “A
44 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 45

lot of what we are doing now is warm-up exercises,” Winer told me.
There is a lot that must mature before this space has its mature effect.
And as the inclusion of content in this space is the least infringing use
of the Internet (meaning infringing on copyright), Winer said, “we will
be the last thing that gets shut down.”
This speech affects democracy. Winer thinks that happens because
“you don’t have to work for somebody who controls, [for] a gatekeeper.” That is true. But it affects democracy in another way as well.
As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in
writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is
easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the
product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare
human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it
is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong.
The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy.
Today there are probably a couple of million blogs where such writing
happens. When there are ten million, there will be something extraordinary to report.

John Seely Brown is the chief scientist of the Xerox Corporation.
His work, as his Web site describes it, is “human learning and . . . the
creation of knowledge ecologies for creating . . . innovation.”
Brown thus looks at these technologies of digital creativity a bit differently from the perspectives I’ve sketched so far. I’m sure he would be
excited about any technology that might improve democracy. But his
real excitement comes from how these technologies affect learning.
As Brown believes, we learn by tinkering. When “a lot of us grew
up,” he explains, that tinkering was done “on motorcycle engines, lawnmower engines, automobiles, radios, and so on.” But digital technologies enable a different kind of tinkering—with abstract ideas though
in concrete form. The kids at Just Think! not only think about how
a commercial portrays a politician; using digital technology, they can
“PIRACY” 45

take the commercial apart and manipulate it, tinker with it to see how
it does what it does. Digital technologies launch a kind of bricolage, or
“free collage,” as Brown calls it. Many get to add to or transform the
tinkering of many others.
The best large-scale example of this kind of tinkering so far is free
software or open-source software (FS/OSS). FS/OSS is software whose
source code is shared. Anyone can download the technology that makes
a FS/OSS program run. And anyone eager to learn how a particular bit
of FS/OSS technology works can tinker with the code.
This opportunity creates a “completely new kind of learning platform,” as Brown describes. “As soon as you start doing that, you . . .
unleash a free collage on the community, so that other people can start
looking at your code, tinkering with it, trying it out, seeing if they can
improve it.” Each effort is a kind of apprenticeship. “Open source becomes a major apprenticeship platform.”
In this process, “the concrete things you tinker with are abstract.
They are code.” Kids are “shifting to the ability to tinker in the abstract, and this tinkering is no longer an isolated activity that you’re doing in your garage. You are tinkering with a community platform. . . .
You are tinkering with other people’s stuff. The more you tinker the
more you improve.” The more you improve, the more you learn.
This same thing happens with content, too. And it happens in the
same collaborative way when that content is part of the Web. As
Brown puts it, “the Web [is] the first medium that truly honors multiple forms of intelligence.” Earlier technologies, such as the typewriter
or word processors, helped amplify text. But the Web amplifies much
more than text. “The Web . . . says if you are musical, if you are artistic, if you are visual, if you are interested in film . . . [then] there is a lot
you can start to do on this medium. [It] can now amplify and honor
these multiple forms of intelligence.”
Brown is talking about what Elizabeth Daley, Stephanie Barish,
and Just Think! teach: that this tinkering with culture teaches as well

46 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 47

as creates. It develops talents differently, and it builds a different kind
of recognition.
Yet the freedom to tinker with these objects is not guaranteed. Indeed, as we’ll see through the course of this book, that freedom is increasingly highly contested. While there’s no doubt that your father
had the right to tinker with the car engine, there’s great doubt that your
child will have the right to tinker with the images she finds all around.
The law and, increasingly, technology interfere with a freedom that
technology, and curiosity, would otherwise ensure.
These restrictions have become the focus of researchers and scholars. Professor Ed Felten of Princeton (whom we’ll see more of in chapter 10) has developed a powerful argument in favor of the “right to
tinker” as it applies to computer science and to knowledge in general.22
But Brown’s concern is earlier, or younger, or more fundamental. It is
about the learning that kids can do, or can’t do, because of the law.
“This is where education in the twenty-first century is going,”
Brown explains. We need to “understand how kids who grow up digital think and want to learn.”
“Yet,” as Brown continued, and as the balance of this book will
evince, “we are building a legal system that completely suppresses the
natural tendencies of today’s digital kids. . . . We’re building an architecture that unleashes 60 percent of the brain [and] a legal system that
closes down that part of the brain.”
We’re building a technology that takes the magic of Kodak, mixes
moving images and sound, and adds a space for commentary and an
opportunity to spread that creativity everywhere. But we’re building
the law to close down that technology.
“No way to run a culture,” as Brewster Kahle, whom we’ll meet in
chapter 9, quipped to me in a rare moment of despondence.

In the fall of 2002, Jesse Jordan of Oceanside, New York, enrolled
as a freshman at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York.
His major at RPI was information technology. Though he is not a programmer, in October Jesse decided to begin to tinker with search engine technology that was available on the RPI network.
RPI is one of America’s foremost technological research institutions. It offers degrees in fields ranging from architecture and engineering to information sciences. More than 65 percent of its five
thousand undergraduates finished in the top 10 percent of their high
school class. The school is thus a perfect mix of talent and experience
to imagine and then build, a generation for the network age.
RPI’s computer network links students, faculty, and administration
to one another. It also links RPI to the Internet. Not everything available on the RPI network is available on the Internet. But the network
is designed to enable students to get access to the Internet, as well as
more intimate access to other members of the RPI community.
Search engines are a measure of a network’s intimacy. Google
48

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 49

brought the Internet much closer to all of us by fantastically improving
the quality of search on the network. Specialty search engines can do
this even better. The idea of “intranet” search engines, search engines
that search within the network of a particular institution, is to provide
users of that institution with better access to material from that institution. Businesses do this all the time, enabling employees to have access to material that people outside the business can’t get. Universities
do it as well.
These engines are enabled by the network technology itself. Microsoft, for example, has a network file system that makes it very easy
for search engines tuned to that network to query the system for information about the publicly (within that network) available content.
Jesse’s search engine was built to take advantage of this technology. It
used Microsoft’s network file system to build an index of all the files
available within the RPI network.
Jesse’s wasn’t the first search engine built for the RPI network. Indeed, his engine was a simple modification of engines that others had
built. His single most important improvement over those engines was
to fix a bug within the Microsoft file-sharing system that could cause a
user’s computer to crash. With the engines that existed before, if you
tried to access a file through a Windows browser that was on a computer that was off-line, your computer could crash. Jesse modified the
system a bit to fix that problem, by adding a button that a user could
click to see if the machine holding the file was still on-line.
Jesse’s engine went on-line in late October. Over the following six
months, he continued to tweak it to improve its functionality. By
March, the system was functioning quite well. Jesse had more than one
million files in his directory, including every type of content that might
be on users’ computers.
Thus the index his search engine produced included pictures,
which students could use to put on their own Web sites; copies of notes
or research; copies of information pamphlets; movie clips that students might have created; university brochures—basically anything that
“PIRACY” 49

users of the RPI network made available in a public folder of their
computer.
But the index also included music files. In fact, one quarter of the
files that Jesse’s search engine listed were music files. But that means,
of course, that three quarters were not, and—so that this point is absolutely clear—Jesse did nothing to induce people to put music files in
their public folders. He did nothing to target the search engine to these
files. He was a kid tinkering with a Google-like technology at a university where he was studying information science, and hence, tinkering was the aim. Unlike Google, or Microsoft, for that matter, he made
no money from this tinkering; he was not connected to any business
that would make any money from this experiment. He was a kid tinkering with technology in an environment where tinkering with technology was precisely what he was supposed to do.
On April 3, 2003, Jesse was contacted by the dean of students at
RPI. The dean informed Jesse that the Recording Industry Association
of America, the RIAA, would be filing a lawsuit against him and three
other students whom he didn’t even know, two of them at other universities. A few hours later, Jesse was served with papers from the suit.
As he read these papers and watched the news reports about them, he
was increasingly astonished.
“It was absurd,” he told me. “I don’t think I did anything wrong. . . .
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the search engine that I ran
or . . . what I had done to it. I mean, I hadn’t modified it in any way
that promoted or enhanced the work of pirates. I just modified the
search engine in a way that would make it easier to use”—again, a
search engine, which Jesse had not himself built, using the Windows filesharing system, which Jesse had not himself built, to enable members
of the RPI community to get access to content, which Jesse had not
himself created or posted, and the vast majority of which had nothing
to do with music.
But the RIAA branded Jesse a pirate. They claimed he operated a
network and had therefore “willfully” violated copyright laws. They de50 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 51

manded that he pay them the damages for his wrong. For cases of
“willful infringement,” the Copyright Act specifies something lawyers
call “statutory damages.” These damages permit a copyright owner to
claim $150,000 per infringement. As the RIAA alleged more than one
hundred specific copyright infringements, they therefore demanded
that Jesse pay them at least $15,000,000.
Similar lawsuits were brought against three other students: one
other student at RPI, one at Michigan Technical University, and one at
Princeton. Their situations were similar to Jesse’s. Though each case
was different in detail, the bottom line in each was exactly the same:
huge demands for “damages” that the RIAA claimed it was entitled to.
If you added up the claims, these four lawsuits were asking courts in
the United States to award the plaintiffs close to $100 billion—six
times the total profit of the film industry in 2001.1
Jesse called his parents. They were supportive but a bit frightened.
An uncle was a lawyer. He began negotiations with the RIAA. They
demanded to know how much money Jesse had. Jesse had saved
$12,000 from summer jobs and other employment. They demanded
$12,000 to dismiss the case.
The RIAA wanted Jesse to admit to doing something wrong. He
refused. They wanted him to agree to an injunction that would essentially make it impossible for him to work in many fields of technology
for the rest of his life. He refused. They made him understand that this
process of being sued was not going to be pleasant. (As Jesse’s father
recounted to me, the chief lawyer on the case, Matt Oppenheimer, told
Jesse, “You don’t want to pay another visit to a dentist like me.”) And
throughout, the RIAA insisted it would not settle the case until it took
every penny Jesse had saved.
Jesse’s family was outraged at these claims. They wanted to fight.
But Jesse’s uncle worked to educate the family about the nature of the
American legal system. Jesse could fight the RIAA. He might even
win. But the cost of fighting a lawsuit like this, Jesse was told, would be
at least $250,000. If he won, he would not recover that money. If he
“PIRACY” 51

won, he would have a piece of paper saying he had won, and a piece of
paper saying he and his family were bankrupt.
So Jesse faced a mafia-like choice: $250,000 and a chance at winning, or $12,000 and a settlement.
The recording industry insists this is a matter of law and morality.
Let’s put the law aside for a moment and think about the morality.
Where is the morality in a lawsuit like this? What is the virtue in
scapegoatism? The RIAA is an extraordinarily powerful lobby. The
president of the RIAA is reported to make more than $1 million a year.
Artists, on the other hand, are not well paid. The average recording
artist makes $45,900.2 There are plenty of ways for the RIAA to affect
and direct policy. So where is the morality in taking money from a student for running a search engine?3
On June 23, Jesse wired his savings to the lawyer working for the
RIAA. The case against him was then dismissed. And with this, this
kid who had tinkered a computer into a $15 million lawsuit became an
activist:
I was definitely not an activist [before]. I never really meant to be
an activist. . . . [But] I’ve been pushed into this. In no way did I
ever foresee anything like this, but I think it’s just completely absurd what the RIAA has done.

Jesse’s parents betray a certain pride in their reluctant activist. As
his father told me, Jesse “considers himself very conservative, and so do
I. . . . He’s not a tree hugger. . . . I think it’s bizarre that they would
pick on him. But he wants to let people know that they’re sending the
wrong message. And he wants to correct the record.”

52 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 53

CHAPTER FOUR:

“Pirates”

If “piracy” means using the creative property of others without
their permission—if “if value, then right” is true—then the history of
the content industry is a history of piracy. Every important sector of
“big media” today—film, records, radio, and cable TV—was born of a
kind of piracy so defined. The consistent story is how last generation’s
pirates join this generation’s country club—until now.

Film

The film industry of Hollywood was built by fleeing pirates.1 Creators
and directors migrated from the East Coast to California in the early
twentieth century in part to escape controls that patents granted the
inventor of filmmaking, Thomas Edison. These controls were exercised through a monopoly “trust,” the Motion Pictures Patents Company, and were based on Thomas Edison’s creative property—patents.
Edison formed the MPPC to exercise the rights this creative property
53

gave him, and the MPPC was serious about the control it demanded.
As one commentator tells one part of the story,
A January 1909 deadline was set for all companies to comply with
the license. By February, unlicensed outlaws, who referred to
themselves as independents protested the trust and carried on
business without submitting to the Edison monopoly. In the
summer of 1909 the independent movement was in full-swing,
with producers and theater owners using illegal equipment and
imported film stock to create their own underground market.
With the country experiencing a tremendous expansion in the
number of nickelodeons, the Patents Company reacted to the independent movement by forming a strong-arm subsidiary known
as the General Film Company to block the entry of non-licensed
independents. With coercive tactics that have become legendary,
General Film confiscated unlicensed equipment, discontinued
product supply to theaters which showed unlicensed films, and
effectively monopolized distribution with the acquisition of all
U.S. film exchanges, except for the one owned by the independent
William Fox who defied the Trust even after his license was revoked.2

The Napsters of those days, the “independents,” were companies like
Fox. And no less than today, these independents were vigorously resisted. “Shooting was disrupted by machinery stolen, and ‘accidents’
resulting in loss of negatives, equipment, buildings and sometimes life
and limb frequently occurred.”3 That led the independents to flee the
East Coast. California was remote enough from Edison’s reach that filmmakers there could pirate his inventions without fear of the law. And the
leaders of Hollywood filmmaking, Fox most prominently, did just that.
Of course, California grew quickly, and the effective enforcement
of federal law eventually spread west. But because patents grant the
patent holder a truly “limited” monopoly (just seventeen years at that
54 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 55

time), by the time enough federal marshals appeared, the patents had
expired. A new industry had been born, in part from the piracy of Edison’s creative property.

Recorded Music

The record industry was born of another kind of piracy, though to see
how requires a bit of detail about the way the law regulates music.
At the time that Edison and Henri Fourneaux invented machines
for reproducing music (Edison the phonograph, Fourneaux the player
piano), the law gave composers the exclusive right to control copies of
their music and the exclusive right to control public performances of
their music. In other words, in 1900, if I wanted a copy of Phil Russel’s
1899 hit “Happy Mose,” the law said I would have to pay for the right
to get a copy of the musical score, and I would also have to pay for the
right to perform it publicly.
But what if I wanted to record “Happy Mose,” using Edison’s
phonograph or Fourneaux’s player piano? Here the law stumbled. It was
clear enough that I would have to buy any copy of the musical score that
I performed in making this recording. And it was clear enough that I
would have to pay for any public performance of the work I was recording. But it wasn’t totally clear that I would have to pay for a “public performance” if I recorded the song in my own house (even today, you don’t
owe the Beatles anything if you sing their songs in the shower), or if I
recorded the song from memory (copies in your brain are not—yet—
regulated by copyright law). So if I simply sang the song into a recording device in the privacy of my own home, it wasn’t clear that I owed the
composer anything. And more importantly, it wasn’t clear whether I
owed the composer anything if I then made copies of those recordings.
Because of this gap in the law, then, I could effectively pirate someone
else’s song without paying its composer anything.
The composers (and publishers) were none too happy about
“PIRACY” 55

this capacity to pirate. As South Dakota senator Alfred Kittredge
put it,
Imagine the injustice of the thing. A composer writes a song or an
opera. A publisher buys at great expense the rights to the same and
copyrights it. Along come the phonographic companies and companies who cut music rolls and deliberately steal the work of the brain
of the composer and publisher without any regard for [their] rights.4

The innovators who developed the technology to record other
people’s works were “sponging upon the toil, the work, the talent, and
genius of American composers,”5 and the “music publishing industry”
was thereby “at the complete mercy of this one pirate.”6 As John Philip
Sousa put it, in as direct a way as possible, “When they make money
out of my pieces, I want a share of it.”7
These arguments have familiar echoes in the wars of our day. So,
too, do the arguments on the other side. The innovators who developed the player piano argued that “it is perfectly demonstrable that the
introduction of automatic music players has not deprived any composer of anything he had before their introduction.” Rather, the machines increased the sales of sheet music.8 In any case, the innovators
argued, the job of Congress was “to consider first the interest of [the
public], whom they represent, and whose servants they are.” “All talk
about ‘theft,’” the general counsel of the American Graphophone
Company wrote, “is the merest claptrap, for there exists no property in
ideas musical, literary or artistic, except as defined by statute.”9
The law soon resolved this battle in favor of the composer and
the recording artist. Congress amended the law to make sure that
composers would be paid for the “mechanical reproductions” of their
music. But rather than simply granting the composer complete control over the right to make mechanical reproductions, Congress gave
recording artists a right to record the music, at a price set by Congress,
once the composer allowed it to be recorded once. This is the part of
56 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 57

copyright law that makes cover songs possible. Once a composer authorizes a recording of his song, others are free to record the same
song, so long as they pay the original composer a fee set by the law.
American law ordinarily calls this a “compulsory license,” but I will
refer to it as a “statutory license.” A statutory license is a license whose
key terms are set by law. After Congress’s amendment of the Copyright
Act in 1909, record companies were free to distribute copies of recordings so long as they paid the composer (or copyright holder) the fee set
by the statute.
This is an exception within the law of copyright. When John Grisham
writes a novel, a publisher is free to publish that novel only if Grisham
gives the publisher permission. Grisham, in turn, is free to charge whatever he wants for that permission. The price to publish Grisham is
thus set by Grisham, and copyright law ordinarily says you have no
permission to use Grisham’s work except with permission of Grisham.
But the law governing recordings gives recording artists less. And
thus, in effect, the law subsidizes the recording industry through a kind
of piracy—by giving recording artists a weaker right than it otherwise
gives creative authors. The Beatles have less control over their creative
work than Grisham does. And the beneficiaries of this less control are
the recording industry and the public. The recording industry gets
something of value for less than it otherwise would pay; the public gets
access to a much wider range of musical creativity. Indeed, Congress
was quite explicit about its reasons for granting this right. Its fear was
the monopoly power of rights holders, and that that power would stifle follow-on creativity.10
While the recording industry has been quite coy about this recently,
historically it has been quite a supporter of the statutory license for
records. As a 1967 report from the House Committee on the Judiciary
relates,
the record producers argued vigorously that the compulsory
license system must be retained. They asserted that the record in“PIRACY” 57

dustry is a half-billion-dollar business of great economic importance in the United States and throughout the world; records
today are the principal means of disseminating music, and this
creates special problems, since performers need unhampered access to musical material on nondiscriminatory terms. Historically,
the record producers pointed out, there were no recording rights
before 1909 and the 1909 statute adopted the compulsory license
as a deliberate anti-monopoly condition on the grant of these
rights. They argue that the result has been an outpouring of
recorded music, with the public being given lower prices, improved quality, and a greater choice.11

By limiting the rights musicians have, by partially pirating their creative work, the record producers, and the public, benefit.

Radio

Radio was also born of piracy.
When a radio station plays a record on the air, that constitutes a
“public performance” of the composer’s work.12 As I described above,
the law gives the composer (or copyright holder) an exclusive right to
public performances of his work. The radio station thus owes the composer money for that performance.
But when the radio station plays a record, it is not only performing
a copy of the composer’s work. The radio station is also performing a
copy of the recording artist’s work. It’s one thing to have “Happy Birthday” sung on the radio by the local children’s choir; it’s quite another to
have it sung by the Rolling Stones or Lyle Lovett. The recording artist
is adding to the value of the composition performed on the radio station. And if the law were perfectly consistent, the radio station would
have to pay the recording artist for his work, just as it pays the composer of the music for his work.
58 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 59

But it doesn’t. Under the law governing radio performances, the radio station does not have to pay the recording artist. The radio station
need only pay the composer. The radio station thus gets a bit of something for nothing. It gets to perform the recording artist’s work for
free, even if it must pay the composer something for the privilege of
playing the song.
This difference can be huge. Imagine you compose a piece of music. Imagine it is your first. You own the exclusive right to authorize
public performances of that music. So if Madonna wants to sing your
song in public, she has to get your permission.
Imagine she does sing your song, and imagine she likes it a lot. She
then decides to make a recording of your song, and it becomes a top
hit. Under our law, every time a radio station plays your song, you get
some money. But Madonna gets nothing, save the indirect effect on
the sale of her CDs. The public performance of her recording is not a
“protected” right. The radio station thus gets to pirate the value of
Madonna’s work without paying her anything.
No doubt, one might argue that, on balance, the recording artists
benefit. On average, the promotion they get is worth more than the
performance rights they give up. Maybe. But even if so, the law ordinarily gives the creator the right to make this choice. By making the
choice for him or her, the law gives the radio station the right to take
something for nothing.

Cable TV

Cable TV was also born of a kind of piracy.
When cable entrepreneurs first started wiring communities with
cable television in 1948, most refused to pay broadcasters for the content that they echoed to their customers. Even when the cable companies started selling access to television broadcasts, they refused to pay
for what they sold. Cable companies were thus Napsterizing broad“PIRACY” 59

casters’ content, but more egregiously than anything Napster ever did—
Napster never charged for the content it enabled others to give away.
Broadcasters and copyright owners were quick to attack this theft.
Rosel Hyde, chairman of the FCC, viewed the practice as a kind of
“unfair and potentially destructive competition.”13 There may have
been a “public interest” in spreading the reach of cable TV, but as Douglas Anello, general counsel to the National Association of Broadcasters, asked Senator Quentin Burdick during testimony, “Does public
interest dictate that you use somebody else’s property?”14 As another
broadcaster put it,
The extraordinary thing about the CATV business is that it is the
only business I know of where the product that is being sold is not
paid for.15

Again, the demand of the copyright holders seemed reasonable
enough:
All we are asking for is a very simple thing, that people who now
take our property for nothing pay for it. We are trying to stop
piracy and I don’t think there is any lesser word to describe it. I
think there are harsher words which would fit it.16

These were “free-ride[rs],” Screen Actor’s Guild president Charlton Heston said, who were “depriving actors of compensation.”17
But again, there was another side to the debate. As Assistant Attorney General Edwin Zimmerman put it,
Our point here is that unlike the problem of whether you have
any copyright protection at all, the problem here is whether copyright holders who are already compensated, who already have a
monopoly, should be permitted to extend that monopoly. . . . The

60 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 61

question here is how much compensation they should have and
how far back they should carry their right to compensation.18

Copyright owners took the cable companies to court. Twice the
Supreme Court held that the cable companies owed the copyright
owners nothing.
It took Congress almost thirty years before it resolved the question
of whether cable companies had to pay for the content they “pirated.”
In the end, Congress resolved this question in the same way that it resolved the question about record players and player pianos. Yes, cable
companies would have to pay for the content that they broadcast; but
the price they would have to pay was not set by the copyright owner.
The price was set by law, so that the broadcasters couldn’t exercise veto
power over the emerging technologies of cable. Cable companies thus
built their empire in part upon a “piracy” of the value created by broadcasters’ content.

These separate stories sing a common theme. If “piracy”
means using value from someone else’s creative property without permission from that creator—as it is increasingly described today19—
then every industry affected by copyright today is the product and
beneficiary of a certain kind of piracy. Film, records, radio, cable
TV. . . . The list is long and could well be expanded. Every generation
welcomes the pirates from the last. Every generation—until now.

There is piracy of copyrighted material. Lots of it. This piracy
comes in many forms. The most significant is commercial piracy, the
unauthorized taking of other people’s content within a commercial
context. Despite the many justifications that are offered in its defense,
this taking is wrong. No one should condone it, and the law should
stop it.
But as well as copy-shop piracy, there is another kind of “taking”
that is more directly related to the Internet. That taking, too, seems
wrong to many, and it is wrong much of the time. Before we paint this
taking “piracy,” however, we should understand its nature a bit more.
For the harm of this taking is significantly more ambiguous than outright copying, and the law should account for that ambiguity, as it has
so often done in the past.

62

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 63

Piracy I

All across the world, but especially in Asia and Eastern Europe, there
are businesses that do nothing but take others people’s copyrighted
content, copy it, and sell it—all without the permission of a copyright
owner. The recording industry estimates that it loses about $4.6 billion
every year to physical piracy1 (that works out to one in three CDs sold
worldwide). The MPAA estimates that it loses $3 billion annually
worldwide to piracy.
This is piracy plain and simple. Nothing in the argument of this
book, nor in the argument that most people make when talking about
the subject of this book, should draw into doubt this simple point:
This piracy is wrong.
Which is not to say that excuses and justifications couldn’t be made
for it. We could, for example, remind ourselves that for the first one
hundred years of the American Republic, America did not honor foreign copyrights. We were born, in this sense, a pirate nation. It might
therefore seem hypocritical for us to insist so strongly that other developing nations treat as wrong what we, for the first hundred years of our
existence, treated as right.
That excuse isn’t terribly strong. Technically, our law did not ban
the taking of foreign works. It explicitly limited itself to American
works. Thus the American publishers who published foreign works
without the permission of foreign authors were not violating any rule.
The copy shops in Asia, by contrast, are violating Asian law. Asian law
does protect foreign copyrights, and the actions of the copy shops violate that law. So the wrong of piracy that they engage in is not just a
moral wrong, but a legal wrong, and not just an internationally legal
wrong, but a locally legal wrong as well.
True, these local rules have, in effect, been imposed upon these
countries. No country can be part of the world economy and choose
not to protect copyright internationally. We may have been born a pi-

rate nation, but we will not allow any other nation to have a similar
childhood.
If a country is to be treated as a sovereign, however, then its laws are
its laws regardless of their source. The international law under which
these nations live gives them some opportunities to escape the burden
of intellectual property law.2 In my view, more developing nations
should take advantage of that opportunity, but when they don’t, then
their laws should be respected. And under the laws of these nations,
this piracy is wrong.
Alternatively, we could try to excuse this piracy by noting that in
any case, it does no harm to the industry. The Chinese who get access
to American CDs at 50 cents a copy are not people who would have
bought those American CDs at $15 a copy. So no one really has any
less money than they otherwise would have had.3
This is often true (though I have friends who have purchased many
thousands of pirated DVDs who certainly have enough money to pay
for the content they have taken), and it does mitigate to some degree
the harm caused by such taking. Extremists in this debate love to say,
“You wouldn’t go into Barnes & Noble and take a book off of the shelf
without paying; why should it be any different with on-line music?”
The difference is, of course, that when you take a book from Barnes &
Noble, it has one less book to sell. By contrast, when you take an MP3
from a computer network, there is not one less CD that can be sold.
The physics of piracy of the intangible are different from the physics of
piracy of the tangible.
This argument is still very weak. However, although copyright is a
property right of a very special sort, it is a property right. Like all property rights, the copyright gives the owner the right to decide the terms
under which content is shared. If the copyright owner doesn’t want to
sell, she doesn’t have to. There are exceptions: important statutory licenses that apply to copyrighted content regardless of the wish of the
copyright owner. Those licenses give people the right to “take” copyrighted content whether or not the copyright owner wants to sell. But
64 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 65

where the law does not give people the right to take content, it is
wrong to take that content even if the wrong does no harm. If we have
a property system, and that system is properly balanced to the technology of a time, then it is wrong to take property without the permission
of a property owner. That is exactly what “property” means.
Finally, we could try to excuse this piracy with the argument that
the piracy actually helps the copyright owner. When the Chinese
“steal” Windows, that makes the Chinese dependent on Microsoft.
Microsoft loses the value of the software that was taken. But it gains
users who are used to life in the Microsoft world. Over time, as the nation grows more wealthy, more and more people will buy software
rather than steal it. And hence over time, because that buying will benefit Microsoft, Microsoft benefits from the piracy. If instead of pirating
Microsoft Windows, the Chinese used the free GNU/Linux operating
system, then these Chinese users would not eventually be buying Microsoft. Without piracy, then, Microsoft would lose.
This argument, too, is somewhat true. The addiction strategy is a
good one. Many businesses practice it. Some thrive because of it. Law
students, for example, are given free access to the two largest legal
databases. The companies marketing both hope the students will become so used to their service that they will want to use it and not the
other when they become lawyers (and must pay high subscription fees).
Still, the argument is not terribly persuasive. We don’t give the alcoholic a defense when he steals his first beer, merely because that will
make it more likely that he will buy the next three. Instead, we ordinarily allow businesses to decide for themselves when it is best to give
their product away. If Microsoft fears the competition of GNU/Linux,
then Microsoft can give its product away, as it did, for example, with
Internet Explorer to fight Netscape. A property right means giving the property owner the right to say who gets access to what—at
least ordinarily. And if the law properly balances the rights of the copyright owner with the rights of access, then violating the law is still
wrong.
“PIRACY” 65

Thus, while I understand the pull of these justifications for piracy,
and I certainly see the motivation, in my view, in the end, these efforts
at justifying commercial piracy simply don’t cut it. This kind of piracy
is rampant and just plain wrong. It doesn’t transform the content it
steals; it doesn’t transform the market it competes in. It merely gives
someone access to something that the law says he should not have.
Nothing has changed to draw that law into doubt. This form of piracy
is flat out wrong.
But as the examples from the four chapters that introduced this
part suggest, even if some piracy is plainly wrong, not all “piracy” is. Or
at least, not all “piracy” is wrong if that term is understood in the way
it is increasingly used today. Many kinds of “piracy” are useful and productive, to produce either new content or new ways of doing business.
Neither our tradition nor any tradition has ever banned all “piracy” in
that sense of the term.
This doesn’t mean that there are no questions raised by the latest
piracy concern, peer-to-peer file sharing. But it does mean that we
need to understand the harm in peer-to-peer sharing a bit more before
we condemn it to the gallows with the charge of piracy.
For (1) like the original Hollywood, p2p sharing escapes an overly
controlling industry; and (2) like the original recording industry, it
simply exploits a new way to distribute content; but (3) unlike cable
TV, no one is selling the content that is shared on p2p services.
These differences distinguish p2p sharing from true piracy. They
should push us to find a way to protect artists while enabling this sharing to survive.

Piracy II

The key to the “piracy” that the law aims to quash is a use that “rob[s]
the author of [his] profit.”4 This means we must determine whether
and how much p2p sharing harms before we know how strongly the
66 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 67

law should seek to either prevent it or find an alternative to assure the
author of his profit.
Peer-to-peer sharing was made famous by Napster. But the inventors
of the Napster technology had not made any major technological innovations. Like every great advance in innovation on the Internet (and, arguably, off the Internet as well5), Shawn Fanning and crew had simply
put together components that had been developed independently.
The result was spontaneous combustion. Launched in July 1999,
Napster amassed over 10 million users within nine months. After
eighteen months, there were close to 80 million registered users of the
system.6 Courts quickly shut Napster down, but other services emerged
to take its place. (Kazaa is currently the most popular p2p service. It
boasts over 100 million members.) These services’ systems are different
architecturally, though not very different in function: Each enables
users to make content available to any number of other users. With a
p2p system, you can share your favorite songs with your best friend—
or your 20,000 best friends.
According to a number of estimates, a huge proportion of Americans have tasted file-sharing technology. A study by Ipsos-Insight in
September 2002 estimated that 60 million Americans had downloaded
music—28 percent of Americans older than 12.7 A survey by the NPD
group quoted in The New York Times estimated that 43 million citizens
used file-sharing networks to exchange content in May 2003.8 The vast
majority of these are not kids. Whatever the actual figure, a massive
quantity of content is being “taken” on these networks. The ease and
inexpensiveness of file-sharing networks have inspired millions to enjoy music in a way that they hadn’t before.
Some of this enjoying involves copyright infringement. Some of it
does not. And even among the part that is technically copyright infringement, calculating the actual harm to copyright owners is more
complicated than one might think. So consider—a bit more carefully
than the polarized voices around this debate usually do—the kinds of
sharing that file sharing enables, and the kinds of harm it entails.
“PIRACY” 67

File sharers share different kinds of content. We can divide these
different kinds into four types.
A. There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released,
rather than buying the CD, these users simply take it. We might
quibble about whether everyone who takes it would actually
have bought it if sharing didn’t make it available for free. Most
probably wouldn’t have, but clearly there are some who would.
The latter are the target of category A: users who download instead of purchasing.
B. There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before
purchasing it. Thus, a friend sends another friend an MP3 of an
artist he’s not heard of. The other friend then buys CDs by that
artist. This is a kind of targeted advertising, quite likely to succeed. If the friend recommending the album gains nothing from
a bad recommendation, then one could expect that the recommendations will actually be quite good. The net effect of this
sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased.
C. There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold or that they would not
have purchased because the transaction costs off the Net are too
high. This use of sharing networks is among the most rewarding for many. Songs that were part of your childhood but have
long vanished from the marketplace magically appear again on
the network. (One friend told me that when she discovered
Napster, she spent a solid weekend “recalling” old songs. She
was astonished at the range and mix of content that was available.) For content not sold, this is still technically a violation of
copyright, though because the copyright owner is not selling the
content anymore, the economic harm is zero—the same harm
that occurs when I sell my collection of 1960s 45-rpm records to
a local collector.
68 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 69

D. Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access
to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner
wants to give away.
How do these different types of sharing balance out?
Let’s start with some simple but important points. From the perspective of the law, only type D sharing is clearly legal. From the
perspective of economics, only type A sharing is clearly harmful.9
Type B sharing is illegal but plainly beneficial. Type C sharing is illegal, yet good for society (since more exposure to music is good) and
harmless to the artist (since the work is not otherwise available). So
how sharing matters on balance is a hard question to answer—and certainly much more difficult than the current rhetoric around the issue
suggests.
Whether on balance sharing is harmful depends importantly on
how harmful type A sharing is. Just as Edison complained about Hollywood, composers complained about piano rolls, recording artists
complained about radio, and broadcasters complained about cable TV,
the music industry complains that type A sharing is a kind of “theft”
that is “devastating” the industry.
While the numbers do suggest that sharing is harmful, how harmful is harder to reckon. It has long been the recording industry’s practice to blame technology for any drop in sales. The history of cassette
recording is a good example. As a study by Cap Gemini Ernst &
Young put it, “Rather than exploiting this new, popular technology, the
labels fought it.”10 The labels claimed that every album taped was an
album unsold, and when record sales fell by 11.4 percent in 1981, the
industry claimed that its point was proved. Technology was the problem, and banning or regulating technology was the answer.
Yet soon thereafter, and before Congress was given an opportunity
to enact regulation, MTV was launched, and the industry had a record
turnaround. “In the end,” Cap Gemini concludes, “the ‘crisis’ . . . was
not the fault of the tapers—who did not [stop after MTV came into
“PIRACY” 69

being]—but had to a large extent resulted from stagnation in musical
innovation at the major labels.”11
But just because the industry was wrong before does not mean it is
wrong today. To evaluate the real threat that p2p sharing presents to
the industry in particular, and society in general—or at least the society that inherits the tradition that gave us the film industry, the record
industry, the radio industry, cable TV, and the VCR—the question is
not simply whether type A sharing is harmful. The question is also how
harmful type A sharing is, and how beneficial the other types of sharing are.
We start to answer this question by focusing on the net harm, from
the standpoint of the industry as a whole, that sharing networks cause.
The “net harm” to the industry as a whole is the amount by which type
A sharing exceeds type B. If the record companies sold more records
through sampling than they lost through substitution, then sharing
networks would actually benefit music companies on balance. They
would therefore have little static reason to resist them.
Could that be true? Could the industry as a whole be gaining because of file sharing? Odd as that might sound, the data about CD
sales actually suggest it might be close.
In 2002, the RIAA reported that CD sales had fallen by 8.9 percent, from 882 million to 803 million units; revenues fell 6.7 percent.12
This confirms a trend over the past few years. The RIAA blames Internet piracy for the trend, though there are many other causes that
could account for this drop. SoundScan, for example, reports a more
than 20 percent drop in the number of CDs released since 1999. That
no doubt accounts for some of the decrease in sales. Rising prices could
account for at least some of the loss. “From 1999 to 2001, the average
price of a CD rose 7.2 percent, from $13.04 to $14.19.”13 Competition
from other forms of media could also account for some of the decline.
As Jane Black of BusinessWeek notes, “The soundtrack to the film High
Fidelity has a list price of $18.98. You could get the whole movie [on
DVD] for $19.99.”14
70 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 71

But let’s assume the RIAA is right, and all of the decline in CD
sales is because of Internet sharing. Here’s the rub: In the same period
that the RIAA estimates that 803 million CDs were sold, the RIAA
estimates that 2.1 billion CDs were downloaded for free. Thus, although 2.6 times the total number of CDs sold were downloaded for
free, sales revenue fell by just 6.7 percent.
There are too many different things happening at the same time to
explain these numbers definitively, but one conclusion is unavoidable:
The recording industry constantly asks, “What’s the difference between downloading a song and stealing a CD?”—but their own numbers reveal the difference. If I steal a CD, then there is one less CD to
sell. Every taking is a lost sale. But on the basis of the numbers the
RIAA provides, it is absolutely clear that the same is not true of
downloads. If every download were a lost sale—if every use of Kazaa
“rob[bed] the author of [his] profit”—then the industry would have
suffered a 100 percent drop in sales last year, not a 7 percent drop. If 2.6
times the number of CDs sold were downloaded for free, and yet sales
revenue dropped by just 6.7 percent, then there is a huge difference between “downloading a song and stealing a CD.”
These are the harms—alleged and perhaps exaggerated but, let’s assume, real. What of the benefits? File sharing may impose costs on the
recording industry. What value does it produce in addition to these
costs?
One benefit is type C sharing—making available content that is
technically still under copyright but is no longer commercially available. This is not a small category of content. There are millions of
tracks that are no longer commercially available.15 And while it’s conceivable that some of this content is not available because the artist
producing the content doesn’t want it to be made available, the vast
majority of it is unavailable solely because the publisher or the distributor has decided it no longer makes economic sense to the company to
make it available.
In real space—long before the Internet—the market had a simple
“PIRACY” 71

response to this problem: used book and record stores. There are thousands of used book and used record stores in America today.16 These
stores buy content from owners, then sell the content they buy. And
under American copyright law, when they buy and sell this content,
even if the content is still under copyright, the copyright owner doesn’t get
a dime. Used book and record stores are commercial entities; their
owners make money from the content they sell; but as with cable companies before statutory licensing, they don’t have to pay the copyright
owner for the content they sell.
Type C sharing, then, is very much like used book stores or used
record stores. It is different, of course, because the person making the
content available isn’t making money from making the content available. It is also different, of course, because in real space, when I sell a
record, I don’t have it anymore, while in cyberspace, when someone
shares my 1949 recording of Bernstein’s “Two Love Songs,” I still have
it. That difference would matter economically if the owner of the 1949
copyright were selling the record in competition to my sharing. But
we’re talking about the class of content that is not currently commercially available. The Internet is making it available, through cooperative sharing, without competing with the market.
It may well be, all things considered, that it would be better if the
copyright owner got something from this trade. But just because it may
well be better, it doesn’t follow that it would be good to ban used book
stores. Or put differently, if you think that type C sharing should be
stopped, do you think that libraries and used book stores should be
shut as well?
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, file-sharing networks enable
type D sharing to occur—the sharing of content that copyright owners
want to have shared or for which there is no continuing copyright. This
sharing clearly benefits authors and society. Science fiction author
Cory Doctorow, for example, released his first novel, Down and Out in
the Magic Kingdom, both free on-line and in bookstores on the same

72 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 73

day. His (and his publisher’s) thinking was that the on-line distribution
would be a great advertisement for the “real” book. People would read
part on-line, and then decide whether they liked the book or not. If
they liked it, they would be more likely to buy it. Doctorow’s content is
type D content. If sharing networks enable his work to be spread, then
both he and society are better off. (Actually, much better off: It is a
great book!)
Likewise for work in the public domain: This sharing benefits society with no legal harm to authors at all. If efforts to solve the problem
of type A sharing destroy the opportunity for type D sharing, then we
lose something important in order to protect type A content.
The point throughout is this: While the recording industry understandably says, “This is how much we’ve lost,” we must also ask, “How
much has society gained from p2p sharing? What are the efficiencies?
What is the content that otherwise would be unavailable?”
For unlike the piracy I described in the first section of this chapter,
much of the “piracy” that file sharing enables is plainly legal and good.
And like the piracy I described in chapter 4, much of this piracy is motivated by a new way of spreading content caused by changes in the
technology of distribution. Thus, consistent with the tradition that
gave us Hollywood, radio, the recording industry, and cable TV, the
question we should be asking about file sharing is how best to preserve
its benefits while minimizing (to the extent possible) the wrongful harm
it causes artists. The question is one of balance. The law should seek
that balance, and that balance will be found only with time.
“But isn’t the war just a war against illegal sharing? Isn’t the target
just what you call type A sharing?”
You would think. And we should hope. But so far, it is not. The effect of the war purportedly on type A sharing alone has been felt far
beyond that one class of sharing. That much is obvious from the Napster case itself. When Napster told the district court that it had developed a technology to block the transfer of 99.4 percent of identified

infringing material, the district court told counsel for Napster 99.4
percent was not good enough. Napster had to push the infringements
“down to zero.”17
If 99.4 percent is not good enough, then this is a war on file-sharing
technologies, not a war on copyright infringement. There is no way to
assure that a p2p system is used 100 percent of the time in compliance
with the law, any more than there is a way to assure that 100 percent of
VCRs or 100 percent of Xerox machines or 100 percent of handguns
are used in compliance with the law. Zero tolerance means zero p2p.
The court’s ruling means that we as a society must lose the benefits of
p2p, even for the totally legal and beneficial uses they serve, simply to
assure that there are zero copyright infringements caused by p2p.
Zero tolerance has not been our history. It has not produced the
content industry that we know today. The history of American law has
been a process of balance. As new technologies changed the way content was distributed, the law adjusted, after some time, to the new technology. In this adjustment, the law sought to ensure the legitimate rights
of creators while protecting innovation. Sometimes this has meant
more rights for creators. Sometimes less.
So, as we’ve seen, when “mechanical reproduction” threatened the
interests of composers, Congress balanced the rights of composers
against the interests of the recording industry. It granted rights to composers, but also to the recording artists: Composers were to be paid, but
at a price set by Congress. But when radio started broadcasting the
recordings made by these recording artists, and they complained to
Congress that their “creative property” was not being respected (since
the radio station did not have to pay them for the creativity it broadcast), Congress rejected their claim. An indirect benefit was enough.
Cable TV followed the pattern of record albums. When the courts
rejected the claim that cable broadcasters had to pay for the content
they rebroadcast, Congress responded by giving broadcasters a right to
compensation, but at a level set by the law. It likewise gave cable companies the right to the content, so long as they paid the statutory price.
74 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 75

This compromise, like the compromise affecting records and player
pianos, served two important goals—indeed, the two central goals of
any copyright legislation. First, the law assured that new innovators
would have the freedom to develop new ways to deliver content. Second, the law assured that copyright holders would be paid for the content that was distributed. One fear was that if Congress simply
required cable TV to pay copyright holders whatever they demanded
for their content, then copyright holders associated with broadcasters
would use their power to stifle this new technology, cable. But if Congress had permitted cable to use broadcasters’ content for free, then it
would have unfairly subsidized cable. Thus Congress chose a path that
would assure compensation without giving the past (broadcasters) control over the future (cable).
In the same year that Congress struck this balance, two major producers and distributors of film content filed a lawsuit against another
technology, the video tape recorder (VTR, or as we refer to them today,
VCRs) that Sony had produced, the Betamax. Disney’s and Universal’s
claim against Sony was relatively simple: Sony produced a device, Disney and Universal claimed, that enabled consumers to engage in copyright infringement. Because the device that Sony built had a “record”
button, the device could be used to record copyrighted movies and
shows. Sony was therefore benefiting from the copyright infringement
of its customers. It should therefore, Disney and Universal claimed, be
partially liable for that infringement.
There was something to Disney’s and Universal’s claim. Sony did
decide to design its machine to make it very simple to record television
shows. It could have built the machine to block or inhibit any direct
copying from a television broadcast. Or possibly, it could have built the
machine to copy only if there were a special “copy me” signal on the
line. It was clear that there were many television shows that did not
grant anyone permission to copy. Indeed, if anyone had asked, no
doubt the majority of shows would not have authorized copying. And
in the face of this obvious preference, Sony could have designed its sys“PIRACY” 75

tem to minimize the opportunity for copyright infringement. It did
not, and for that, Disney and Universal wanted to hold it responsible
for the architecture it chose.
MPAA president Jack Valenti became the studios’ most vocal
champion. Valenti called VCRs “tapeworms.” He warned, “When
there are 20, 30, 40 million of these VCRs in the land, we will be invaded by millions of ‘tapeworms,’ eating away at the very heart and
essence of the most precious asset the copyright owner has, his copyright.”18 “One does not have to be trained in sophisticated marketing
and creative judgment,” he told Congress, “to understand the devastation on the after-theater marketplace caused by the hundreds of millions of tapings that will adversely impact on the future of the creative
community in this country. It is simply a question of basic economics
and plain common sense.”19 Indeed, as surveys would later show, 45
percent of VCR owners had movie libraries of ten videos or more20—a
use the Court would later hold was not “fair.” By “allowing VCR owners to copy freely by the means of an exemption from copyright infringement without creating a mechanism to compensate copyright
owners,” Valenti testified, Congress would “take from the owners the
very essence of their property: the exclusive right to control who may
use their work, that is, who may copy it and thereby profit from its reproduction.”21
It took eight years for this case to be resolved by the Supreme
Court. In the interim, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Hollywood in its jurisdiction—leading Judge Alex Kozinski,
who sits on that court, refers to it as the “Hollywood Circuit”—held
that Sony would be liable for the copyright infringement made possible by its machines. Under the Ninth Circuit’s rule, this totally familiar technology—which Jack Valenti had called “the Boston Strangler
of the American film industry” (worse yet, it was a Japanese Boston
Strangler of the American film industry)—was an illegal technology.22
But the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Ninth Circuit.

76 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 77

And in its reversal, the Court clearly articulated its understanding of
when and whether courts should intervene in such disputes. As the
Court wrote,
Sound policy, as well as history, supports our consistent deference
to Congress when major technological innovations alter the market for copyrighted materials. Congress has the constitutional authority and the institutional ability to accommodate fully the
varied permutations of competing interests that are inevitably implicated by such new technology.23

Congress was asked to respond to the Supreme Court’s decision.
But as with the plea of recording artists about radio broadcasts, Congress ignored the request. Congress was convinced that American film
got enough, this “taking” notwithstanding.
If we put these cases together, a pattern is clear:
CASE

WHOSE VALUE

RESPONSE OF

WAS “PIRATED”

THE COURTS

RESPONSE OF CONGRESS

Recordings

Composers

No protection

Statutory license

Radio

Recording artists

N/A

Nothing

Cable TV
VCR

Broadcasters
Film creators

No protection
No protection

Statutory license
Nothing

In each case throughout our history, a new technology changed the
way content was distributed.24 In each case, throughout our history,
that change meant that someone got a “free ride” on someone else’s
work.
In none of these cases did either the courts or Congress eliminate all
free riding. In none of these cases did the courts or Congress insist that
the law should assure that the copyright holder get all the value that his
copyright created. In every case, the copyright owners complained of
“piracy.” In every case, Congress acted to recognize some of the legiti-

macy in the behavior of the “pirates.” In each case, Congress allowed
some new technology to benefit from content made before. It balanced
the interests at stake.
When you think across these examples, and the other examples that
make up the first four chapters of this section, this balance makes
sense. Was Walt Disney a pirate? Would doujinshi be better if creators
had to ask permission? Should tools that enable others to capture and
spread images as a way to cultivate or criticize our culture be better regulated? Is it really right that building a search engine should expose you
to $15 million in damages? Would it have been better if Edison had
controlled film? Should every cover band have to hire a lawyer to get
permission to record a song?
We could answer yes to each of these questions, but our tradition
has answered no. In our tradition, as the Supreme Court has stated,
copyright “has never accorded the copyright owner complete control
over all possible uses of his work.”25 Instead, the particular uses that the
law regulates have been defined by balancing the good that comes from
granting an exclusive right against the burdens such an exclusive right
creates. And this balancing has historically been done after a technology has matured, or settled into the mix of technologies that facilitate
the distribution of content.
We should be doing the same thing today. The technology of the
Internet is changing quickly. The way people connect to the Internet
(wires vs. wireless) is changing very quickly. No doubt the network
should not become a tool for “stealing” from artists. But neither should
the law become a tool to entrench one particular way in which artists
(or more accurately, distributors) get paid. As I describe in some detail
in the last chapter of this book, we should be securing income to artists
while we allow the market to secure the most efficient way to promote
and distribute content. This will require changes in the law, at least
in the interim. These changes should be designed to balance the protection of the law against the strong public interest that innovation
continue.
78 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 79

This is especially true when a new technology enables a vastly superior mode of distribution. And this p2p has done. P2p technologies
can be ideally efficient in moving content across a widely diverse network. Left to develop, they could make the network vastly more efficient. Yet these “potential public benefits,” as John Schwartz writes in
The New York Times, “could be delayed in the P2P fight.”26

Yet when anyone begins to talk about “balance,” the copyright warriors raise a different argument. “All this hand waving about balance
and incentives,” they say, “misses a fundamental point. Our content,”
the warriors insist, “is our property. Why should we wait for Congress
to ‘rebalance’ our property rights? Do you have to wait before calling
the police when your car has been stolen? And why should Congress
deliberate at all about the merits of this theft? Do we ask whether the
car thief had a good use for the car before we arrest him?”
“It is our property,” the warriors insist. “And it should be protected
just as any other property is protected.”

The copyright warriors are right: A copyright is a kind of
property. It can be owned and sold, and the law protects against its
theft. Ordinarily, the copyright owner gets to hold out for any price he
wants. Markets reckon the supply and demand that partially determine
the price she can get.
But in ordinary language, to call a copyright a “property” right is a
bit misleading, for the property of copyright is an odd kind of property.
Indeed, the very idea of property in any idea or any expression is very
odd. I understand what I am taking when I take the picnic table you
put in your backyard. I am taking a thing, the picnic table, and after I
take it, you don’t have it. But what am I taking when I take the good
idea you had to put a picnic table in the backyard—by, for example, going to Sears, buying a table, and putting it in my backyard? What is the
thing I am taking then?
The point is not just about the thingness of picnic tables versus
ideas, though that’s an important difference. The point instead is that
in the ordinary case—indeed, in practically every case except for a nar83

row range of exceptions—ideas released to the world are free. I don’t
take anything from you when I copy the way you dress—though I
might seem weird if I did it every day, and especially weird if you are a
woman. Instead, as Thomas Jefferson said (and as is especially true
when I copy the way someone else dresses), “He who receives an idea
from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who
lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”1
The exceptions to free use are ideas and expressions within the
reach of the law of patent and copyright, and a few other domains that
I won’t discuss here. Here the law says you can’t take my idea or expression without my permission: The law turns the intangible into
property.
But how, and to what extent, and in what form—the details, in
other words—matter. To get a good sense of how this practice of turning the intangible into property emerged, we need to place this “property” in its proper context.2
My strategy in doing this will be the same as my strategy in the preceding part. I offer four stories to help put the idea of “copyright material is property” in context. Where did the idea come from? What are
its limits? How does it function in practice? After these stories, the
significance of this true statement—“copyright material is property”—
will be a bit more clear, and its implications will be revealed as quite
different from the implications that the copyright warriors would have
us draw.

84 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 85

CHAPTER SIX:

Founders

William Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet in 1595. The play
was first published in 1597. It was the eleventh major play that Shakespeare had written. He would continue to write plays through 1613,
and the plays that he wrote have continued to define Anglo-American
culture ever since. So deeply have the works of a sixteenth-century writer
seeped into our culture that we often don’t even recognize their source.
I once overheard someone commenting on Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Henry V: “I liked it, but Shakespeare is so full of clichés.”
In 1774, almost 180 years after Romeo and Juliet was written, the
“copy-right” for the work was still thought by many to be the exclusive
right of a single London publisher, Jacob Tonson.1 Tonson was the
most prominent of a small group of publishers called the Conger 2 who
controlled bookselling in England during the eighteenth century. The
Conger claimed a perpetual right to control the “copy” of books that
they had acquired from authors. That perpetual right meant that no
one else could publish copies of a book to which they held the copy-

right. Prices of the classics were thus kept high; competition to produce better or cheaper editions was eliminated.
Now, there’s something puzzling about the year 1774 to anyone who
knows a little about copyright law. The better-known year in the history
of copyright is 1710, the year that the British Parliament adopted the
first “copyright” act. Known as the Statute of Anne, the act stated that
all published works would get a copyright term of fourteen years, renewable once if the author was alive, and that all works already published by 1710 would get a single term of twenty-one additional years.3
Under this law, Romeo and Juliet should have been free in 1731. So why
was there any issue about it still being under Tonson’s control in 1774?
The reason is that the English hadn’t yet agreed on what a “copyright” was—indeed, no one had. At the time the English passed the
Statute of Anne, there was no other legislation governing copyrights.
The last law regulating publishers, the Licensing Act of 1662, had expired in 1695. That law gave publishers a monopoly over publishing, as
a way to make it easier for the Crown to control what was published.
But after it expired, there was no positive law that said that the publishers, or “Stationers,” had an exclusive right to print books.
There was no positive law, but that didn’t mean that there was no
law. The Anglo-American legal tradition looks to both the words of
legislatures and the words of judges to know the rules that are to govern how people are to behave. We call the words from legislatures “positive law.” We call the words from judges “common law.” The common
law sets the background against which legislatures legislate; the legislature, ordinarily, can trump that background only if it passes a law to
displace it. And so the real question after the licensing statutes had expired was whether the common law protected a copyright, independent of any positive law.
This question was important to the publishers, or “booksellers,” as
they were called, because there was growing competition from foreign
publishers. The Scottish, in particular, were increasingly publishing
and exporting books to England. That competition reduced the profits
86 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 87

of the Conger, which reacted by demanding that Parliament pass a law
to again give them exclusive control over publishing. That demand ultimately resulted in the Statute of Anne.
The Statute of Anne granted the author or “proprietor” of a book
an exclusive right to print that book. In an important limitation, however, and to the horror of the booksellers, the law gave the bookseller
that right for a limited term. At the end of that term, the copyright “expired,” and the work would then be free and could be published by
anyone. Or so the legislature is thought to have believed.
Now, the thing to puzzle about for a moment is this: Why would
Parliament limit the exclusive right? Not why would they limit it to the
particular limit they set, but why would they limit the right at all?
For the booksellers, and the authors whom they represented, had a
very strong claim. Take Romeo and Juliet as an example: That play was
written by Shakespeare. It was his genius that brought it into the
world. He didn’t take anybody’s property when he created this play
(that’s a controversial claim, but never mind), and by his creating this
play, he didn’t make it any harder for others to craft a play. So why is it
that the law would ever allow someone else to come along and take
Shakespeare’s play without his, or his estate’s, permission? What reason is there to allow someone else to “steal” Shakespeare’s work?
The answer comes in two parts. We first need to see something special about the notion of “copyright” that existed at the time of the
Statute of Anne. Second, we have to see something important about
“booksellers.”
First, about copyright. In the last three hundred years, we have
come to apply the concept of “copyright” ever more broadly. But in
1710, it wasn’t so much a concept as it was a very particular right. The
copyright was born as a very specific set of restrictions: It forbade others from reprinting a book. In 1710, the “copy-right” was a right to use
a particular machine to replicate a particular work. It did not go beyond that very narrow right. It did not control any more generally how
a work could be used. Today the right includes a large collection of re“PROPERTY” 87

strictions on the freedom of others: It grants the author the exclusive
right to copy, the exclusive right to distribute, the exclusive right to
perform, and so on.
So, for example, even if the copyright to Shakespeare’s works were
perpetual, all that would have meant under the original meaning of the
term was that no one could reprint Shakespeare’s work without the permission of the Shakespeare estate. It would not have controlled anything, for example, about how the work could be performed, whether
the work could be translated, or whether Kenneth Branagh would be
allowed to make his films. The “copy-right” was only an exclusive right
to print—no less, of course, but also no more.
Even that limited right was viewed with skepticism by the British.
They had had a long and ugly experience with “exclusive rights,” especially “exclusive rights” granted by the Crown. The English had fought
a civil war in part about the Crown’s practice of handing out monopolies—especially monopolies for works that already existed. King Henry
VIII granted a patent to print the Bible and a monopoly to Darcy to
print playing cards. The English Parliament began to fight back
against this power of the Crown. In 1656, it passed the Statute of Monopolies, limiting monopolies to patents for new inventions. And by
1710, Parliament was eager to deal with the growing monopoly in
publishing.
Thus the “copy-right,” when viewed as a monopoly right, was naturally viewed as a right that should be limited. (However convincing
the claim that “it’s my property, and I should have it forever,” try
sounding convincing when uttering, “It’s my monopoly, and I should
have it forever.”) The state would protect the exclusive right, but only
so long as it benefited society. The British saw the harms from specialinterest favors; they passed a law to stop them.
Second, about booksellers. It wasn’t just that the copyright was a
monopoly. It was also that it was a monopoly held by the booksellers.
Booksellers sound quaint and harmless to us. They were not viewed
as harmless in seventeenth-century England. Members of the Conger
88 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 89

were increasingly seen as monopolists of the worst kind—tools of the
Crown’s repression, selling the liberty of England to guarantee themselves a monopoly profit. The attacks against these monopolists were
harsh: Milton described them as “old patentees and monopolizers in
the trade of book-selling”; they were “men who do not therefore labour
in an honest profession to which learning is indetted.”4
Many believed the power the booksellers exercised over the spread
of knowledge was harming that spread, just at the time the Enlightenment was teaching the importance of education and knowledge spread
generally. The idea that knowledge should be free was a hallmark of the
time, and these powerful commercial interests were interfering with
that idea.
To balance this power, Parliament decided to increase competition
among booksellers, and the simplest way to do that was to spread the
wealth of valuable books. Parliament therefore limited the term of
copyrights, and thereby guaranteed that valuable books would become
open to any publisher to publish after a limited time. Thus the setting
of the term for existing works to just twenty-one years was a compromise to fight the power of the booksellers. The limitation on terms was
an indirect way to assure competition among publishers, and thus the
construction and spread of culture.
When 1731 (1710 + 21) came along, however, the booksellers were
getting anxious. They saw the consequences of more competition, and
like every competitor, they didn’t like them. At first booksellers simply
ignored the Statute of Anne, continuing to insist on the perpetual right
to control publication. But in 1735 and 1737, they tried to persuade
Parliament to extend their terms. Twenty-one years was not enough,
they said; they needed more time.
Parliament rejected their requests. As one pamphleteer put it, in
words that echo today,
I see no Reason for granting a further Term now, which will not
hold as well for granting it again and again, as often as the Old
“PROPERTY” 89

ones Expire; so that should this Bill pass, it will in Effect be establishing a perpetual Monopoly, a Thing deservedly odious in
the Eye of the Law; it will be a great Cramp to Trade, a Discouragement to Learning, no Benefit to the Authors, but a general
Tax on the Publick; and all this only to increase the private Gain
of the Booksellers.5

Having failed in Parliament, the publishers turned to the courts in
a series of cases. Their argument was simple and direct: The Statute of
Anne gave authors certain protections through positive law, but those
protections were not intended as replacements for the common law.
Instead, they were intended simply to supplement the common law.
Under common law, it was already wrong to take another person’s creative “property” and use it without his permission. The Statute of Anne,
the booksellers argued, didn’t change that. Therefore, just because the
protections of the Statute of Anne expired, that didn’t mean the protections of the common law expired: Under the common law they had
the right to ban the publication of a book, even if its Statute of Anne
copyright had expired. This, they argued, was the only way to protect
authors.
This was a clever argument, and one that had the support of some
of the leading jurists of the day. It also displayed extraordinary chutzpah. Until then, as law professor Raymond Patterson has put it, “The
publishers . . . had as much concern for authors as a cattle rancher has
for cattle.”6 The bookseller didn’t care squat for the rights of the author. His concern was the monopoly profit that the author’s work gave.
The booksellers’ argument was not accepted without a fight.
The hero of this fight was a Scottish bookseller named Alexander
Donaldson.7
Donaldson was an outsider to the London Conger. He began his
career in Edinburgh in 1750. The focus of his business was inexpensive
reprints “of standard works whose copyright term had expired,” at least
under the Statute of Anne.8 Donaldson’s publishing house prospered
90 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 91

and became “something of a center for literary Scotsmen.” “[A]mong
them,” Professor Mark Rose writes, was “the young James Boswell
who, together with his friend Andrew Erskine, published an anthology
of contemporary Scottish poems with Donaldson.”9
When the London booksellers tried to shut down Donaldson’s
shop in Scotland, he responded by moving his shop to London, where
he sold inexpensive editions “of the most popular English books, in defiance of the supposed common law right of Literary Property.”10 His
books undercut the Conger prices by 30 to 50 percent, and he rested
his right to compete upon the ground that, under the Statute of Anne,
the works he was selling had passed out of protection.
The London booksellers quickly brought suit to block “piracy” like
Donaldson’s. A number of actions were successful against the “pirates,”
the most important early victory being Millar v. Taylor.
Millar was a bookseller who in 1729 had purchased the rights to
James Thomson’s poem “The Seasons.” Millar complied with the requirements of the Statute of Anne, and therefore received the full protection of the statute. After the term of copyright ended, Robert Taylor
began printing a competing volume. Millar sued, claiming a perpetual
common law right, the Statute of Anne notwithstanding.11
Astonishingly to modern lawyers, one of the greatest judges in English history, Lord Mansfield, agreed with the booksellers. Whatever
protection the Statute of Anne gave booksellers, it did not, he held,
extinguish any common law right. The question was whether the
common law would protect the author against subsequent “pirates.”
Mansfield’s answer was yes: The common law would bar Taylor from
reprinting Thomson’s poem without Millar’s permission. That common law rule thus effectively gave the booksellers a perpetual right to
control the publication of any book assigned to them.
Considered as a matter of abstract justice—reasoning as if justice
were just a matter of logical deduction from first principles—Mansfield’s
conclusion might make some sense. But what it ignored was the larger
issue that Parliament had struggled with in 1710: How best to limit
“PROPERTY” 91

the monopoly power of publishers? Parliament’s strategy was to offer a
term for existing works that was long enough to buy peace in 1710, but
short enough to assure that culture would pass into competition within
a reasonable period of time. Within twenty-one years, Parliament believed, Britain would mature from the controlled culture that the
Crown coveted to the free culture that we inherited.
The fight to defend the limits of the Statute of Anne was not to end
there, however, and it is here that Donaldson enters the mix.
Millar died soon after his victory, so his case was not appealed. His
estate sold Thomson’s poems to a syndicate of printers that included
Thomas Beckett.12 Donaldson then released an unauthorized edition
of Thomson’s works. Beckett, on the strength of the decision in Millar,
got an injunction against Donaldson. Donaldson appealed the case to
the House of Lords, which functioned much like our own Supreme
Court. In February of 1774, that body had the chance to interpret the
meaning of Parliament’s limits from sixty years before.
As few legal cases ever do, Donaldson v. Beckett drew an enormous
amount of attention throughout Britain. Donaldson’s lawyers argued
that whatever rights may have existed under the common law, the Statute
of Anne terminated those rights. After passage of the Statute of Anne,
the only legal protection for an exclusive right to control publication
came from that statute. Thus, they argued, after the term specified in
the Statute of Anne expired, works that had been protected by the
statute were no longer protected.
The House of Lords was an odd institution. Legal questions were
presented to the House and voted upon first by the “law lords,” members of special legal distinction who functioned much like the Justices
in our Supreme Court. Then, after the law lords voted, the House of
Lords generally voted.
The reports about the law lords’ votes are mixed. On some counts,
it looks as if perpetual copyright prevailed. But there is no ambiguity
about how the House of Lords voted as whole. By a two-to-one ma-

92 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 93

jority (22 to 11) they voted to reject the idea of perpetual copyrights.
Whatever one’s understanding of the common law, now a copyright
was fixed for a limited time, after which the work protected by copyright passed into the public domain.
“The public domain.” Before the case of Donaldson v. Beckett, there
was no clear idea of a public domain in England. Before 1774, there
was a strong argument that common law copyrights were perpetual.
After 1774, the public domain was born. For the first time in AngloAmerican history, the legal control over creative works expired, and the
greatest works in English history—including those of Shakespeare,
Bacon, Milton, Johnson, and Bunyan—were free of legal restraint.
It is hard for us to imagine, but this decision by the House of Lords
fueled an extraordinarily popular and political reaction. In Scotland,
where most of the “pirate publishers” did their work, people celebrated
the decision in the streets. As the Edinburgh Advertiser reported, “No
private cause has so much engrossed the attention of the public, and
none has been tried before the House of Lords in the decision of
which so many individuals were interested.” “Great rejoicing in Edinburgh upon victory over literary property: bonfires and illuminations.”13
In London, however, at least among publishers, the reaction was
equally strong in the opposite direction. The Morning Chronicle reported:
By the above decision . . . near 200,000 pounds worth of what
was honestly purchased at public sale, and which was yesterday
thought property is now reduced to nothing. The Booksellers of
London and Westminster, many of whom sold estates and houses
to purchase Copy-right, are in a manner ruined, and those who
after many years industry thought they had acquired a competency to provide for their families now find themselves without a
shilling to devise to their successors. 14

“Ruined” is a bit of an exaggeration. But it is not an exaggeration to
say that the change was profound. The decision of the House of Lords
meant that the booksellers could no longer control how culture in England would grow and develop. Culture in England was thereafter free.
Not in the sense that copyrights would not be respected, for of course,
for a limited time after a work was published, the bookseller had an exclusive right to control the publication of that book. And not in the
sense that books could be stolen, for even after a copyright expired, you
still had to buy the book from someone. But free in the sense that the
culture and its growth would no longer be controlled by a small group
of publishers. As every free market does, this free market of free culture
would grow as the consumers and producers chose. English culture
would develop as the many English readers chose to let it develop—
chose in the books they bought and wrote; chose in the memes they
repeated and endorsed. Chose in a competitive context, not a context
in which the choices about what culture is available to people and
how they get access to it are made by the few despite the wishes of
the many.
At least, this was the rule in a world where the Parliament is antimonopoly, resistant to the protectionist pleas of publishers. In a world
where the Parliament is more pliant, free culture would be less protected.

94 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 95

CHAPTER SEVEN:

Recorders

Jon Else is a filmmaker. He is best known for his documentaries and
has been very successful in spreading his art. He is also a teacher, and
as a teacher myself, I envy the loyalty and admiration that his students
feel for him. (I met, by accident, two of his students at a dinner party.
He was their god.)
Else worked on a documentary that I was involved in. At a break,
he told me a story about the freedom to create with film in America
today.
In 1990, Else was working on a documentary about Wagnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ring
Cycle. The focus was stagehands at the San Francisco Opera. Stagehands are a particularly funny and colorful element of an opera. During a show, they hang out below the stage in the gripsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lounge and in
the lighting loft. They make a perfect contrast to the art on the stage.
During one of the performances, Else was shooting some stagehands playing checkers. In one corner of the room was a television set.
Playing on the television set, while the stagehands played checkers and
the opera company played Wagner, was The Simpsons. As Else judged
95

it, this touch of cartoon helped capture the flavor of what was special
about the scene.
Years later, when he finally got funding to complete the film, Else
attempted to clear the rights for those few seconds of The Simpsons.
For of course, those few seconds are copyrighted; and of course, to use
copyrighted material you need the permission of the copyright owner,
unless “fair use” or some other privilege applies.
Else called Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s office to get permission. Groening approved the shot. The shot was a four-and-a-halfsecond image on a tiny television set in the corner of the room. How
could it hurt? Groening was happy to have it in the film, but he told
Else to contact Gracie Films, the company that produces the program.
Gracie Films was okay with it, too, but they, like Groening, wanted
to be careful. So they told Else to contact Fox, Gracie’s parent company.
Else called Fox and told them about the clip in the corner of the one
room shot of the film. Matt Groening had already given permission,
Else said. He was just confirming the permission with Fox.
Then, as Else told me, “two things happened. First we discovered . . . that Matt Groening doesn’t own his own creation—or at least
that someone [at Fox] believes he doesn’t own his own creation.” And
second, Fox “wanted ten thousand dollars as a licensing fee for us to use
this four-point-five seconds of . . . entirely unsolicited Simpsons which
was in the corner of the shot.”
Else was certain there was a mistake. He worked his way up to
someone he thought was a vice president for licensing, Rebecca Herrera. He explained to her, “There must be some mistake here. . . .
We’re asking for your educational rate on this.” That was the educational rate, Herrera told Else. A day or so later, Else called again to
confirm what he had been told.
“I wanted to make sure I had my facts straight,” he told me. “Yes,
you have your facts straight,” she said. It would cost $10,000 to use the
clip of The Simpsons in the corner of a shot in a documentary film about

96 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 97

Wagner’s Ring Cycle. And then, astonishingly, Herrera told Else, “And
if you quote me, I’ll turn you over to our attorneys.” As an assistant to
Herrera told Else later on, “They don’t give a shit. They just want the
money.”
Else didn’t have the money to buy the right to replay what was playing on the television backstage at the San Francisco Opera. To reproduce
this reality was beyond the documentary filmmaker’s budget. At the very
last minute before the film was to be released, Else digitally replaced the
shot with a clip from another film that he had worked on, The Day After
Trinity, from ten years before.

There’s no doubt that someone, whether Matt Groening or Fox,
owns the copyright to The Simpsons. That copyright is their property.
To use that copyrighted material thus sometimes requires the permission of the copyright owner. If the use that Else wanted to make of the
Simpsons copyright were one of the uses restricted by the law, then he
would need to get the permission of the copyright owner before he
could use the work in that way. And in a free market, it is the owner of
the copyright who gets to set the price for any use that the law says the
owner gets to control.
For example, “public performance” is a use of The Simpsons that
the copyright owner gets to control. If you take a selection of favorite
episodes, rent a movie theater, and charge for tickets to come see “My
Favorite Simpsons,” then you need to get permission from the copyright owner. And the copyright owner (rightly, in my view) can charge
whatever she wants—$10 or $1,000,000. That’s her right, as set by
the law.
But when lawyers hear this story about Jon Else and Fox, their first
thought is “fair use.”1 Else’s use of just 4.5 seconds of an indirect shot
of a Simpsons episode is clearly a fair use of The Simpsons—and fair use
does not require the permission of anyone.

So I asked Else why he didn’t just rely upon “fair use.” Here’s his reply:
The Simpsons fiasco was for me a great lesson in the gulf between what lawyers find irrelevant in some abstract sense, and
what is crushingly relevant in practice to those of us actually
trying to make and broadcast documentaries. I never had any
doubt that it was “clearly fair use” in an absolute legal sense. But
I couldn’t rely on the concept in any concrete way. Here’s why:
1. Before our films can be broadcast, the network requires
that we buy Errors and Omissions insurance. The carriers require a detailed “visual cue sheet” listing the source and licensing status of each shot in the film. They take a dim view of
“fair use,” and a claim of “fair use” can grind the application
process to a halt.
2. I probably never should have asked Matt Groening in the
first place. But I knew (at least from folklore) that Fox had a
history of tracking down and stopping unlicensed Simpsons
usage, just as George Lucas had a very high profile litigating
Star Wars usage. So I decided to play by the book, thinking
that we would be granted free or cheap license to four seconds
of Simpsons. As a documentary producer working to exhaustion on a shoestring, the last thing I wanted was to risk legal
trouble, even nuisance legal trouble, and even to defend a
principle.
3. I did, in fact, speak with one of your colleagues at Stanford
Law School . . . who confirmed that it was fair use. He also
confirmed that Fox would “depose and litigate you to within
an inch of your life,” regardless of the merits of my claim. He
made clear that it would boil down to who had the bigger legal department and the deeper pockets, me or them.
98 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 99

4. The question of fair use usually comes up at the end of the
project, when we are up against a release deadline and out of
money.

In theory, fair use means you need no permission. The theory therefore supports free culture and insulates against a permission culture.
But in practice, fair use functions very differently. The fuzzy lines of
the law, tied to the extraordinary liability if lines are crossed, means
that the effective fair use for many types of creators is slight. The law
has the right aim; practice has defeated the aim.
This practice shows just how far the law has come from its
eighteenth-century roots. The law was born as a shield to protect publishers’ profits against the unfair competition of a pirate. It has matured
into a sword that interferes with any use, transformative or not.

In 1993, Alex Alben was a lawyer working at Starwave, Inc. Starwave was an innovative company founded by Microsoft cofounder
Paul Allen to develop digital entertainment. Long before the Internet
became popular, Starwave began investing in new technology for delivering entertainment in anticipation of the power of networks.
Alben had a special interest in new technology. He was intrigued by
the emerging market for CD-ROM technology窶馬ot to distribute
film, but to do things with film that otherwise would be very difficult.
In 1993, he launched an initiative to develop a product to build retrospectives on the work of particular actors. The first actor chosen was
Clint Eastwood. The idea was to showcase all of the work of Eastwood, with clips from his films and interviews with figures important
to his career.
At that time, Eastwood had made more than fifty films, as an actor
and as a director. Alben began with a series of interviews with Eastwood, asking him about his career. Because Starwave produced those
interviews, it was free to include them on the CD.
100

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 101

That alone would not have made a very interesting product, so
Starwave wanted to add content from the movies in Eastwood’s career:
posters, scripts, and other material relating to the films Eastwood
made. Most of his career was spent at Warner Brothers, and so it was
relatively easy to get permission for that content.
Then Alben and his team decided to include actual film clips. “Our
goal was that we were going to have a clip from every one of Eastwood’s films,” Alben told me. It was here that the problem arose. “No
one had ever really done this before,” Alben explained. “No one had
ever tried to do this in the context of an artistic look at an actor’s
career.”
Alben brought the idea to Michael Slade, the CEO of Starwave.
Slade asked, “Well, what will it take?”
Alben replied, “Well, we’re going to have to clear rights from
everyone who appears in these films, and the music and everything
else that we want to use in these film clips.” Slade said, “Great! Go
for it.”1
The problem was that neither Alben nor Slade had any idea what
clearing those rights would mean. Every actor in each of the films
could have a claim to royalties for the reuse of that film. But CDROMs had not been specified in the contracts for the actors, so there
was no clear way to know just what Starwave was to do.
I asked Alben how he dealt with the problem. With an obvious
pride in his resourcefulness that obscured the obvious bizarreness of his
tale, Alben recounted just what they did:
So we very mechanically went about looking up the film clips.
We made some artistic decisions about what film clips to include—of course we were going to use the “Make my day” clip
from Dirty Harry. But you then need to get the guy on the ground
who’s wiggling under the gun and you need to get his permission. And then you have to decide what you are going to pay
him.
“PROPERTY” 101

We decided that it would be fair if we offered them the dayplayer rate for the right to reuse that performance. We’re talking
about a clip of less than a minute, but to reuse that performance
in the CD-ROM the rate at the time was about $600.
So we had to identify the people—some of them were hard to
identify because in Eastwood movies you can’t tell who’s the guy
crashing through the glass—is it the actor or is it the stuntman?
And then we just, we put together a team, my assistant and some
others, and we just started calling people.

Some actors were glad to help—Donald Sutherland, for example,
followed up himself to be sure that the rights had been cleared.
Others were dumbfounded at their good fortune. Alben would ask,
“Hey, can I pay you $600 or maybe if you were in two films, you
know, $1,200?” And they would say, “Are you for real? Hey, I’d love
to get $1,200.” And some of course were a bit difficult (estranged
ex-wives, in particular). But eventually, Alben and his team had
cleared the rights to this retrospective CD-ROM on Clint Eastwood’s
career.
It was one year later—“and even then we weren’t sure whether we
were totally in the clear.”
Alben is proud of his work. The project was the first of its kind and
the only time he knew of that a team had undertaken such a massive
project for the purpose of releasing a retrospective.
Everyone thought it would be too hard. Everyone just threw up
their hands and said, “Oh, my gosh, a film, it’s so many copyrights, there’s the music, there’s the screenplay, there’s the director,
there’s the actors.” But we just broke it down. We just put it into
its constituent parts and said, “Okay, there’s this many actors, this
many directors, . . . this many musicians,” and we just went at it
very systematically and cleared the rights.

102 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 103

And no doubt, the product itself was exceptionally good. Eastwood
loved it, and it sold very well.
But I pressed Alben about how weird it seems that it would have to
take a year’s work simply to clear rights. No doubt Alben had done this
efficiently, but as Peter Drucker has famously quipped, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at
all.”2 Did it make sense, I asked Alben, that this is the way a new work
has to be made?
For, as he acknowledged, “very few . . . have the time and resources,
and the will to do this,” and thus, very few such works would ever be
made. Does it make sense, I asked him, from the standpoint of what
anybody really thought they were ever giving rights for originally, that
you would have to go clear rights for these kinds of clips?
I don’t think so. When an actor renders a performance in a movie,
he or she gets paid very well. . . . And then when 30 seconds of
that performance is used in a new product that is a retrospective
of somebody’s career, I don’t think that that person . . . should be
compensated for that.

Or at least, is this how the artist should be compensated? Would it
make sense, I asked, for there to be some kind of statutory license that
someone could pay and be free to make derivative use of clips like this?
Did it really make sense that a follow-on creator would have to track
down every artist, actor, director, musician, and get explicit permission
from each? Wouldn’t a lot more be created if the legal part of the creative process could be made to be more clean?
Absolutely. I think that if there were some fair-licensing mechanism—where you weren’t subject to hold-ups and you weren’t
subject to estranged former spouses—you’d see a lot more of this
work, because it wouldn’t be so daunting to try to put together a

retrospective of someone’s career and meaningfully illustrate it
with lots of media from that person’s career. You’d build in a cost
as the producer of one of these things. You’d build in a cost of paying X dollars to the talent that performed. But it would be a
known cost. That’s the thing that trips everybody up and makes
this kind of product hard to get off the ground. If you knew I have
a hundred minutes of film in this product and it’s going to cost me
X, then you build your budget around it, and you can get investments and everything else that you need to produce it. But if you
say, “Oh, I want a hundred minutes of something and I have no
idea what it’s going to cost me, and a certain number of people are
going to hold me up for money,” then it becomes difficult to put
one of these things together.

Alben worked for a big company. His company was backed by some
of the richest investors in the world. He therefore had authority and
access that the average Web designer would not have. So if it took him
a year, how long would it take someone else? And how much creativity
is never made just because the costs of clearing the rights are so high?
These costs are the burdens of a kind of regulation. Put on a Republican hat for a moment, and get angry for a bit. The government
defines the scope of these rights, and the scope defined determines
how much it’s going to cost to negotiate them. (Remember the idea
that land runs to the heavens, and imagine the pilot purchasing flythrough rights as he negotiates to fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco.)
These rights might well have once made sense; but as circumstances
change, they make no sense at all. Or at least, a well-trained, regulationminimizing Republican should look at the rights and ask, “Does this
still make sense?”
I’ve seen the flash of recognition when people get this point, but only
a few times. The first was at a conference of federal judges in California.
The judges were gathered to discuss the emerging topic of cyber-law. I
was asked to be on the panel. Harvey Saferstein, a well-respected lawyer
104 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 105

from an L.A. firm, introduced the panel with a video that he and a
friend, Robert Fairbank, had produced.
The video was a brilliant collage of film from every period in the
twentieth century, all framed around the idea of a 60 Minutes episode.
The execution was perfect, down to the sixty-minute stopwatch. The
judges loved every minute of it.
When the lights came up, I looked over to my copanelist, David
Nimmer, perhaps the leading copyright scholar and practitioner in the
nation. He had an astonished look on his face, as he peered across the
room of over 250 well-entertained judges. Taking an ominous tone, he
began his talk with a question: “Do you know how many federal laws
were just violated in this room?”
For of course, the two brilliantly talented creators who made this
film hadn’t done what Alben did. They hadn’t spent a year clearing the
rights to these clips; technically, what they had done violated the law.
Of course, it wasn’t as if they or anyone were going to be prosecuted for
this violation (the presence of 250 judges and a gaggle of federal marshals notwithstanding). But Nimmer was making an important point:
A year before anyone would have heard of the word Napster, and two
years before another member of our panel, David Boies, would defend
Napster before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Nimmer was trying to get the judges to see that the law would not be friendly to the
capacities that this technology would enable. Technology means you
can now do amazing things easily; but you couldn’t easily do them
legally.

We live in a “cut and paste” culture enabled by technology. Anyone
building a presentation knows the extraordinary freedom that the cut
and paste architecture of the Internet created—in a second you can
find just about any image you want; in another second, you can have it
planted in your presentation.
But presentations are just a tiny beginning. Using the Internet and
“PROPERTY” 105

its archives, musicians are able to string together mixes of sound never
before imagined; filmmakers are able to build movies out of clips on
computers around the world. An extraordinary site in Sweden takes
images of politicians and blends them with music to create biting political commentary. A site called Camp Chaos has produced some of
the most biting criticism of the record industry that there is through
the mixing of Flash! and music.
All of these creations are technically illegal. Even if the creators
wanted to be “legal,” the cost of complying with the law is impossibly
high. Therefore, for the law-abiding sorts, a wealth of creativity is
never made. And for that part that is made, if it doesn’t follow the
clearance rules, it doesn’t get released.
To some, these stories suggest a solution: Let’s alter the mix of
rights so that people are free to build upon our culture. Free to add or
mix as they see fit. We could even make this change without necessarily requiring that the “free” use be free as in “free beer.” Instead, the system could simply make it easy for follow-on creators to compensate
artists without requiring an army of lawyers to come along: a rule, for
example, that says “the royalty owed the copyright owner of an unregistered work for the derivative reuse of his work will be a flat 1 percent
of net revenues, to be held in escrow for the copyright owner.” Under
this rule, the copyright owner could benefit from some royalty, but he
would not have the benefit of a full property right (meaning the right
to name his own price) unless he registers the work.
Who could possibly object to this? And what reason would there be
for objecting? We’re talking about work that is not now being made;
which if made, under this plan, would produce new income for artists.
What reason would anyone have to oppose it?

In February 2003, DreamWorks studios announced an agreement with Mike Myers, the comic genius of Saturday Night Live and
Austin Powers. According to the announcement, Myers and Dream106 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 107

Works would work together to form a “unique filmmaking pact.” Under
the agreement, DreamWorks “will acquire the rights to existing motion
picture hits and classics, write new storylines and—with the use of stateof-the-art digital technology—insert Myers and other actors into the
film, thereby creating an entirely new piece of entertainment.”
The announcement called this “film sampling.” As Myers explained, “Film Sampling is an exciting way to put an original spin on
existing films and allow audiences to see old movies in a new light. Rap
artists have been doing this for years with music and now we are able
to take that same concept and apply it to film.” Steven Spielberg is
quoted as saying, “If anyone can create a way to bring old films to new
audiences, it is Mike.”
Spielberg is right. Film sampling by Myers will be brilliant. But if
you don’t think about it, you might miss the truly astonishing point
about this announcement. As the vast majority of our film heritage remains under copyright, the real meaning of the DreamWorks announcement is just this: It is Mike Myers and only Mike Myers who is
free to sample. Any general freedom to build upon the film archive of
our culture, a freedom in other contexts presumed for us all, is now a
privilege reserved for the funny and famous—and presumably rich.
This privilege becomes reserved for two sorts of reasons. The first
continues the story of the last chapter: the vagueness of “fair use.”
Much of “sampling” should be considered “fair use.” But few would
rely upon so weak a doctrine to create. That leads to the second reason
that the privilege is reserved for the few: The costs of negotiating the
legal rights for the creative reuse of content are astronomically high.
These costs mirror the costs with fair use: You either pay a lawyer to
defend your fair use rights or pay a lawyer to track down permissions
so you don’t have to rely upon fair use rights. Either way, the creative
process is a process of paying lawyers—again a privilege, or perhaps a
curse, reserved for the few.

In April 1996, millions of “bots”—computer codes designed to
“spider,” or automatically search the Internet and copy content—began
running across the Net. Page by page, these bots copied Internet-based
information onto a small set of computers located in a basement in San
Francisco’s Presidio. Once the bots finished the whole of the Internet,
they started again. Over and over again, once every two months, these
bits of code took copies of the Internet and stored them.
By October 2001, the bots had collected more than five years of
copies. And at a small announcement in Berkeley, California, the archive
that these copies created, the Internet Archive, was opened to the
world. Using a technology called “the Way Back Machine,” you could
enter a Web page, and see all of its copies going back to 1996, as well
as when those pages changed.
This is the thing about the Internet that Orwell would have appreciated. In the dystopia described in 1984, old newspapers were constantly updated to assure that the current view of the world, approved
of by the government, was not contradicted by previous news reports.
108

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 109

Thousands of workers constantly reedited the past, meaning there was
no way ever to know whether the story you were reading today was the
story that was printed on the date published on the paper.
It’s the same with the Internet. If you go to a Web page today,
there’s no way for you to know whether the content you are reading is
the same as the content you read before. The page may seem the same,
but the content could easily be different. The Internet is Orwell’s library—constantly updated, without any reliable memory.
Until the Way Back Machine, at least. With the Way Back Machine, and the Internet Archive underlying it, you can see what the
Internet was. You have the power to see what you remember. More
importantly, perhaps, you also have the power to find what you don’t
remember and what others might prefer you forget.1

We take it for granted that we can go back to see what we remember reading. Think about newspapers. If you wanted to study the reaction of your hometown newspaper to the race riots in Watts in 1965,
or to Bull Connor’s water cannon in 1963, you could go to your public
library and look at the newspapers. Those papers probably exist on
microfiche. If you’re lucky, they exist in paper, too. Either way, you
are free, using a library, to go back and remember—not just what it is
convenient to remember, but remember something close to the truth.
It is said that those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it. That’s not quite correct. We all forget history. The key is whether
we have a way to go back to rediscover what we forget. More directly, the
key is whether an objective past can keep us honest. Libraries help do
that, by collecting content and keeping it, for schoolchildren, for researchers, for grandma. A free society presumes this knowedge.
The Internet was an exception to this presumption. Until the Internet Archive, there was no way to go back. The Internet was the
quintessentially transitory medium. And yet, as it becomes more important in forming and reforming society, it becomes more and more im“PROPERTY” 109

portant to maintain in some historical form. It’s just bizarre to think that
we have scads of archives of newspapers from tiny towns around the
world, yet there is but one copy of the Internet—the one kept by the Internet Archive.
Brewster Kahle is the founder of the Internet Archive. He was a very
successful Internet entrepreneur after he was a successful computer researcher. In the 1990s, Kahle decided he had had enough business success. It was time to become a different kind of success. So he launched
a series of projects designed to archive human knowledge. The Internet Archive was just the first of the projects of this Andrew Carnegie
of the Internet. By December of 2002, the archive had over 10 billion
pages, and it was growing at about a billion pages a month.
The Way Back Machine is the largest archive of human knowledge
in human history. At the end of 2002, it held “two hundred and thirty
terabytes of material”—and was “ten times larger than the Library of
Congress.” And this was just the first of the archives that Kahle set
out to build. In addition to the Internet Archive, Kahle has been constructing the Television Archive. Television, it turns out, is even more
ephemeral than the Internet. While much of twentieth-century culture
was constructed through television, only a tiny proportion of that culture is available for anyone to see today. Three hours of news are recorded each evening by Vanderbilt University—thanks to a specific
exemption in the copyright law. That content is indexed, and is available
to scholars for a very low fee. “But other than that, [television] is almost
unavailable,” Kahle told me. “If you were Barbara Walters you could get
access to [the archives], but if you are just a graduate student?” As Kahle
put it,
Do you remember when Dan Quayle was interacting with Murphy Brown? Remember that back and forth surreal experience of
a politician interacting with a fictional television character? If you
were a graduate student wanting to study that, and you wanted to
get those original back and forth exchanges between the two, the
110 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 111

60 Minutes episode that came out after it . . . it would be almost
impossible. . . . Those materials are almost unfindable. . . .

Why is that? Why is it that the part of our culture that is recorded
in newspapers remains perpetually accessible, while the part that is
recorded on videotape is not? How is it that we’ve created a world
where researchers trying to understand the effect of media on nineteenthcentury America will have an easier time than researchers trying to understand the effect of media on twentieth-century America?
In part, this is because of the law. Early in American copyright law,
copyright owners were required to deposit copies of their work in libraries. These copies were intended both to facilitate the spread of
knowledge and to assure that a copy of the work would be around once
the copyright expired, so that others might access and copy the work.
These rules applied to film as well. But in 1915, the Library of Congress made an exception for film. Film could be copyrighted so long
as such deposits were made. But the filmmaker was then allowed to
borrow back the deposits—for an unlimited time at no cost. In 1915
alone, there were more than 5,475 films deposited and “borrowed back.”
Thus, when the copyrights to films expire, there is no copy held by any
library. The copy exists—if it exists at all—in the library archive of the
film company.2
The same is generally true about television. Television broadcasts
were originally not copyrighted—there was no way to capture the
broadcasts, so there was no fear of “theft.” But as technology enabled
capturing, broadcasters relied increasingly upon the law. The law required they make a copy of each broadcast for the work to be “copyrighted.” But those copies were simply kept by the broadcasters. No
library had any right to them; the government didn’t demand them.
The content of this part of American culture is practically invisible to
anyone who would look.
Kahle was eager to correct this. Before September 11, 2001, he and
his allies had started capturing television. They selected twenty sta“PROPERTY” 111

tions from around the world and hit the Record button. After September 11, Kahle, working with dozens of others, selected twenty stations
from around the world and, beginning October 11, 2001, made their
coverage during the week of September 11 available free on-line. Anyone could see how news reports from around the world covered the
events of that day.
Kahle had the same idea with film. Working with Rick Prelinger,
whose archive of film includes close to 45,000 “ephemeral films”
(meaning films other than Hollywood movies, films that were never
copyrighted), Kahle established the Movie Archive. Prelinger let Kahle
digitize 1,300 films in this archive and post those films on the Internet
to be downloaded for free. Prelinger’s is a for-profit company. It sells
copies of these films as stock footage. What he has discovered is that
after he made a significant chunk available for free, his stock footage
sales went up dramatically. People could easily find the material they
wanted to use. Some downloaded that material and made films on
their own. Others purchased copies to enable other films to be made.
Either way, the archive enabled access to this important part of our culture. Want to see a copy of the “Duck and Cover” film that instructed
children how to save themselves in the middle of nuclear attack? Go to
archive.org, and you can download the film in a few minutes—for free.
Here again, Kahle is providing access to a part of our culture that
we otherwise could not get easily, if at all. It is yet another part of what
defines the twentieth century that we have lost to history. The law
doesn’t require these copies to be kept by anyone, or to be deposited in
an archive by anyone. Therefore, there is no simple way to find them.
The key here is access, not price. Kahle wants to enable free access to
this content, but he also wants to enable others to sell access to it. His
aim is to ensure competition in access to this important part of our culture. Not during the commercial life of a bit of creative property, but during a second life that all creative property has—a noncommercial life.
For here is an idea that we should more clearly recognize. Every bit
of creative property goes through different “lives.” In its first life, if the
112 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 113

creator is lucky, the content is sold. In such cases the commercial market is successful for the creator. The vast majority of creative property
doesn’t enjoy such success, but some clearly does. For that content,
commercial life is extremely important. Without this commercial market, there would be, many argue, much less creativity.
After the commercial life of creative property has ended, our tradition has always supported a second life as well. A newspaper delivers
the news every day to the doorsteps of America. The very next day, it is
used to wrap fish or to fill boxes with fragile gifts or to build an archive
of knowledge about our history. In this second life, the content can
continue to inform even if that information is no longer sold.
The same has always been true about books. A book goes out of
print very quickly (the average today is after about a year 3). After it is
out of print, it can be sold in used book stores without the copyright
owner getting anything and stored in libraries, where many get to read
the book, also for free. Used book stores and libraries are thus the second life of a book. That second life is extremely important to the
spread and stability of culture.
Yet increasingly, any assumption about a stable second life for creative property does not hold true with the most important components
of popular culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For
these—television, movies, music, radio, the Internet—there is no guarantee of a second life. For these sorts of culture, it is as if we’ve replaced
libraries with Barnes & Noble superstores. With this culture, what’s
accessible is nothing but what a certain limited market demands. Beyond that, culture disappears.

For most of the twentieth century, it was economics that made this
so. It would have been insanely expensive to collect and make accessible all television and film and music: The cost of analog copies is extraordinarily high. So even though the law in principle would have
restricted the ability of a Brewster Kahle to copy culture generally, the
“PROPERTY” 113

real restriction was economics. The market made it impossibly difficult
to do anything about this ephemeral culture; the law had little practical effect.
Perhaps the single most important feature of the digital revolution
is that for the first time since the Library of Alexandria, it is feasible to
imagine constructing archives that hold all culture produced or distributed publicly. Technology makes it possible to imagine an archive of all
books published, and increasingly makes it possible to imagine an
archive of all moving images and sound.
The scale of this potential archive is something we’ve never imagined before. The Brewster Kahles of our history have dreamed about it;
but we are for the first time at a point where that dream is possible. As
Kahle describes,
It looks like there’s about two to three million recordings of music. Ever. There are about a hundred thousand theatrical releases
of movies, . . . and about one to two million movies [distributed]
during the twentieth century. There are about twenty-six million
different titles of books. All of these would fit on computers that
would fit in this room and be able to be afforded by a small company. So we’re at a turning point in our history. Universal access is
the goal. And the opportunity of leading a different life, based on
this, is . . . thrilling. It could be one of the things humankind
would be most proud of. Up there with the Library of Alexandria,
putting a man on the moon, and the invention of the printing
press.

Kahle is not the only librarian. The Internet Archive is not the only
archive. But Kahle and the Internet Archive suggest what the future of
libraries or archives could be. When the commercial life of creative
property ends, I don’t know. But it does. And whenever it does, Kahle
and his archive hint at a world where this knowledge, and culture, remains perpetually available. Some will draw upon it to understand it;
114 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 115

some to criticize it. Some will use it, as Walt Disney did, to re-create
the past for the future. These technologies promise something that had
become unimaginable for much of our past—a future for our past. The
technology of digital arts could make the dream of the Library of
Alexandria real again.
Technologists have thus removed the economic costs of building
such an archive. But lawyers’ costs remain. For as much as we might
like to call these “archives,” as warm as the idea of a “library” might
seem, the “content” that is collected in these digital spaces is also someone’s “property.” And the law of property restricts the freedoms that
Kahle and others would exercise.

Jack Valenti has been the president of the Motion Picture Association of America since 1966. He first came to Washington, D.C.,
with Lyndon Johnson’s administration—literally. The famous picture
of Johnson’s swearing-in on Air Force One after the assassination of
President Kennedy has Valenti in the background. In his almost forty
years of running the MPAA, Valenti has established himself as perhaps
the most prominent and effective lobbyist in Washington.
The MPAA is the American branch of the international Motion
Picture Association. It was formed in 1922 as a trade association whose
goal was to defend American movies against increasing domestic criticism. The organization now represents not only filmmakers but producers and distributors of entertainment for television, video, and
cable. Its board is made up of the chairmen and presidents of the seven
major producers and distributors of motion picture and television programs in the United States: Walt Disney, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal
Studios, and Warner Brothers.
116

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 117

Valenti is only the third president of the MPAA. No president
before him has had as much influence over that organization, or over
Washington. As a Texan, Valenti has mastered the single most important political skill of a Southerner—the ability to appear simple and
slow while hiding a lightning-fast intellect. To this day, Valenti plays
the simple, humble man. But this Harvard MBA, and author of four
books, who finished high school at the age of fifteen and flew more
than fifty combat missions in World War II, is no Mr. Smith. When
Valenti went to Washington, he mastered the city in a quintessentially
Washingtonian way.
In defending artistic liberty and the freedom of speech that our culture depends upon, the MPAA has done important good. In crafting
the MPAA rating system, it has probably avoided a great deal of
speech-regulating harm. But there is an aspect to the organization’s
mission that is both the most radical and the most important. This is
the organization’s effort, epitomized in Valenti’s every act, to redefine
the meaning of “creative property.”
In 1982, Valenti’s testimony to Congress captured the strategy perfectly:
No matter the lengthy arguments made, no matter the charges
and the counter-charges, no matter the tumult and the shouting,
reasonable men and women will keep returning to the fundamental issue, the central theme which animates this entire debate: Creative property owners must be accorded the same rights and protection
resident in all other property owners in the nation. That is the issue.
That is the question. And that is the rostrum on which this entire
hearing and the debates to follow must rest.1

The strategy of this rhetoric, like the strategy of most of Valenti’s
rhetoric, is brilliant and simple and brilliant because simple. The “central theme” to which “reasonable men and women” will return is this:
“Creative property owners must be accorded the same rights and pro“PROPERTY” 117

tections resident in all other property owners in the nation.” There are
no second-class citizens, Valenti might have continued. There should
be no second-class property owners.
This claim has an obvious and powerful intuitive pull. It is stated
with such clarity as to make the idea as obvious as the notion that we
use elections to pick presidents. But in fact, there is no more extreme a
claim made by anyone who is serious in this debate than this claim of
Valenti’s. Jack Valenti, however sweet and however brilliant, is perhaps
the nation’s foremost extremist when it comes to the nature and scope
of “creative property.” His views have no reasonable connection to our
actual legal tradition, even if the subtle pull of his Texan charm has
slowly redefined that tradition, at least in Washington.
While “creative property” is certainly “property” in a nerdy and precise sense that lawyers are trained to understand,2 it has never been the
case, nor should it be, that “creative property owners” have been “accorded the same rights and protection resident in all other property
owners.” Indeed, if creative property owners were given the same rights
as all other property owners, that would effect a radical, and radically
undesirable, change in our tradition.
Valenti knows this. But he speaks for an industry that cares squat
for our tradition and the values it represents. He speaks for an industry
that is instead fighting to restore the tradition that the British overturned in 1710. In the world that Valenti’s changes would create, a
powerful few would exercise powerful control over how our creative
culture would develop.
I have two purposes in this chapter. The first is to convince you
that, historically, Valenti’s claim is absolutely wrong. The second is to
convince you that it would be terribly wrong for us to reject our history. We have always treated rights in creative property differently
from the rights resident in all other property owners. They have never
been the same. And they should never be the same, because, however
counterintuitive this may seem, to make them the same would be to

118 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 119

fundamentally weaken the opportunity for new creators to create. Creativity depends upon the owners of creativity having less than perfect
control.
Organizations such as the MPAA, whose board includes the most
powerful of the old guard, have little interest, their rhetoric notwithstanding, in assuring that the new can displace them. No organization
does. No person does. (Ask me about tenure, for example.) But what’s
good for the MPAA is not necessarily good for America. A society that
defends the ideals of free culture must preserve precisely the opportunity for new creativity to threaten the old.

To get just a hint that there is something fundamentally wrong in
Valenti’s argument, we need look no further than the United States
Constitution itself.
The framers of our Constitution loved “property.” Indeed, so
strongly did they love property that they built into the Constitution an
important requirement. If the government takes your property—if it
condemns your house, or acquires a slice of land from your farm—it is
required, under the Fifth Amendment’s “Takings Clause,” to pay you
“just compensation” for that taking. The Constitution thus guarantees
that property is, in a certain sense, sacred. It cannot ever be taken from
the property owner unless the government pays for the privilege.
Yet the very same Constitution speaks very differently about what
Valenti calls “creative property.” In the clause granting Congress the
power to create “creative property,” the Constitution requires that after
a “limited time,” Congress take back the rights that it has granted and
set the “creative property” free to the public domain. Yet when Congress does this, when the expiration of a copyright term “takes” your
copyright and turns it over to the public domain, Congress does not
have any obligation to pay “just compensation” for this “taking.” Instead, the same Constitution that requires compensation for your land

requires that you lose your “creative property” right without any compensation at all.
The Constitution thus on its face states that these two forms of
property are not to be accorded the same rights. They are plainly to be
treated differently. Valenti is therefore not just asking for a change in
our tradition when he argues that creative-property owners should be
accorded the same rights as every other property-right owner. He is effectively arguing for a change in our Constitution itself.
Arguing for a change in our Constitution is not necessarily wrong.
There was much in our original Constitution that was plainly wrong.
The Constitution of 1789 entrenched slavery; it left senators to be appointed rather than elected; it made it possible for the electoral college
to produce a tie between the president and his own vice president (as it
did in 1800). The framers were no doubt extraordinary, but I would be
the first to admit that they made big mistakes. We have since rejected
some of those mistakes; no doubt there could be others that we should
reject as well. So my argument is not simply that because Jefferson did
it, we should, too.
Instead, my argument is that because Jefferson did it, we should at
least try to understand why. Why did the framers, fanatical property
types that they were, reject the claim that creative property be given the
same rights as all other property? Why did they require that for creative property there must be a public domain?
To answer this question, we need to get some perspective on the history of these “creative property” rights, and the control that they enabled. Once we see clearly how differently these rights have been
defined, we will be in a better position to ask the question that should
be at the core of this war: Not whether creative property should be protected, but how. Not whether we will enforce the rights the law gives to
creative-property owners, but what the particular mix of rights ought to
be. Not whether artists should be paid, but whether institutions designed
to assure that artists get paid need also control how culture develops.

120 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 121

To answer these questions, we need a more general way to talk
about how property is protected. More precisely, we need a more general way than the narrow language of the law allows. In Code and Other
Laws of Cyberspace, I used a simple model to capture this more general
perspective. For any particular right or regulation, this model asks how
four different modalities of regulation interact to support or weaken
the right or regulation. I represented it with this diagram:

At the center of this picture is a regulated dot: the individual or
group that is the target of regulation, or the holder of a right. (In each
case throughout, we can describe this either as regulation or as a right.
For simplicity’s sake, I will speak only of regulations.) The ovals represent four ways in which the individual or group might be regulated—
either constrained or, alternatively, enabled. Law is the most obvious
constraint (to lawyers, at least). It constrains by threatening punishments after the fact if the rules set in advance are violated. So if, for example, you willfully infringe Madonna’s copyright by copying a song
from her latest CD and posting it on the Web, you can be punished

with a $150,000 fine. The fine is an ex post punishment for violating
an ex ante rule. It is imposed by the state.
Norms are a different kind of constraint. They, too, punish an individual for violating a rule. But the punishment of a norm is imposed by
a community, not (or not only) by the state. There may be no law
against spitting, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be punished if you
spit on the ground while standing in line at a movie. The punishment
might not be harsh, though depending upon the community, it could
easily be more harsh than many of the punishments imposed by the
state. The mark of the difference is not the severity of the rule, but the
source of the enforcement.
The market is a third type of constraint. Its constraint is effected
through conditions: You can do X if you pay Y; you’ll be paid M if
you do N. These constraints are obviously not independent of law or
norms—it is property law that defines what must be bought if it is to be
taken legally; it is norms that say what is appropriately sold. But given a
set of norms, and a background of property and contract law, the market imposes a simultaneous constraint upon how an individual or group
might behave.
Finally, and for the moment, perhaps, most mysteriously, “architecture”—the physical world as one finds it—is a constraint on behavior. A fallen bridge might constrain your ability to get across a
river. Railroad tracks might constrain the ability of a community to
integrate its social life. As with the market, architecture does not effect its constraint through ex post punishments. Instead, also as with
the market, architecture effects its constraint through simultaneous
conditions. These conditions are imposed not by courts enforcing contracts, or by police punishing theft, but by nature, by “architecture.”
If a 500-pound boulder blocks your way, it is the law of gravity that
enforces this constraint. If a $500 airplane ticket stands between
you and a flight to New York, it is the market that enforces this constraint.

122 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 123

So the first point about these four modalities of regulation is obvious: They interact. Restrictions imposed by one might be reinforced
by another. Or restrictions imposed by one might be undermined by
another.
The second point follows directly: If we want to understand the
effective freedom that anyone has at a given moment to do any particular thing, we have to consider how these four modalities interact.
Whether or not there are other constraints (there may well be; my
claim is not about comprehensiveness), these four are among the most
significant, and any regulator (whether controlling or freeing) must
consider how these four in particular interact.
So, for example, consider the “freedom” to drive a car at a high
speed. That freedom is in part restricted by laws: speed limits that say
how fast you can drive in particular places at particular times. It is in
part restricted by architecture: speed bumps, for example, slow most rational drivers; governors in buses, as another example, set the maximum rate at which the driver can drive. The freedom is in part restricted
by the market: Fuel efficiency drops as speed increases, thus the price of
gasoline indirectly constrains speed. And finally, the norms of a community may or may not constrain the freedom to speed. Drive at 50
mph by a school in your own neighborhood and you’re likely to be
punished by the neighbors. The same norm wouldn’t be as effective in
a different town, or at night.
The final point about this simple model should also be fairly clear:
While these four modalities are analytically independent, law has a
special role in affecting the three.3 The law, in other words, sometimes
operates to increase or decrease the constraint of a particular modality.
Thus, the law might be used to increase taxes on gasoline, so as to increase the incentives to drive more slowly. The law might be used to
mandate more speed bumps, so as to increase the difficulty of driving
rapidly. The law might be used to fund ads that stigmatize reckless
driving. Or the law might be used to require that other laws be more

strict—a federal requirement that states decrease the speed limit, for
example—so as to decrease the attractiveness of fast driving.
These constraints can thus change, and they can be changed. To
understand the effective protection of liberty or protection of property
at any particular moment, we must track these changes over time. A restriction imposed by one modality might be erased by another. A freedom enabled by one modality might be displaced by another.4

Why Hollywood Is Right

The most obvious point that this model reveals is just why, or just
how, Hollywood is right. The copyright warriors have rallied Congress
and the courts to defend copyright. This model helps us see why that
rallying makes sense.
Let’s say this is the picture of copyright’s regulation before the Internet:
124 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 125

There is balance between law, norms, market, and architecture. The
law limits the ability to copy and share content, by imposing penalties
on those who copy and share content. Those penalties are reinforced by
technologies that make it hard to copy and share content (architecture)
and expensive to copy and share content (market). Finally, those penalties are mitigated by norms we all recognize—kids, for example, taping
other kids’ records. These uses of copyrighted material may well be infringement, but the norms of our society (before the Internet, at least)
had no problem with this form of infringement.
Enter the Internet, or, more precisely, technologies such as MP3s
and p2p sharing. Now the constraint of architecture changes dramatically, as does the constraint of the market. And as both the market and
architecture relax the regulation of copyright, norms pile on. The
happy balance (for the warriors, at least) of life before the Internet becomes an effective state of anarchy after the Internet.
Thus the sense of, and justification for, the warriors’ response. Technology has changed, the warriors say, and the effect of this change,
when ramified through the market and norms, is that a balance of protection for the copyright owners’ rights has been lost. This is Iraq
“PROPERTY” 125

after the fall of Saddam, but this time no government is justifying the
looting that results.
Neither this analysis nor the conclusions that follow are new to the
warriors. Indeed, in a “White Paper” prepared by the Commerce Department (one heavily influenced by the copyright warriors) in 1995,
this mix of regulatory modalities had already been identified and the
strategy to respond already mapped. In response to the changes the Internet had effected, the White Paper argued (1) Congress should
strengthen intellectual property law, (2) businesses should adopt innovative marketing techniques, (3) technologists should push to develop
code to protect copyrighted material, and (4) educators should educate
kids to better protect copyright.
This mixed strategy is just what copyright needed—if it was to preserve the particular balance that existed before the change induced by
the Internet. And it’s just what we should expect the content industry
to push for. It is as American as apple pie to consider the happy life
you have as an entitlement, and to look to the law to protect it if something comes along to change that happy life. Homeowners living in a

126 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 127

flood plain have no hesitation appealing to the government to rebuild
(and rebuild again) when a flood (architecture) wipes away their property (law). Farmers have no hesitation appealing to the government to
bail them out when a virus (architecture) devastates their crop. Unions
have no hesitation appealing to the government to bail them out when
imports (market) wipe out the U.S. steel industry.
Thus, there’s nothing wrong or surprising in the content industry’s
campaign to protect itself from the harmful consequences of a technological innovation. And I would be the last person to argue that the
changing technology of the Internet has not had a profound effect on the
content industry’s way of doing business, or as John Seely Brown describes it, its “architecture of revenue.”
But just because a particular interest asks for government support,
it doesn’t follow that support should be granted. And just because technology has weakened a particular way of doing business, it doesn’t follow that the government should intervene to support that old way of
doing business. Kodak, for example, has lost perhaps as much as 20
percent of their traditional film market to the emerging technologies
of digital cameras.5 Does anyone believe the government should ban
digital cameras just to support Kodak? Highways have weakened the
freight business for railroads. Does anyone think we should ban trucks
from roads for the purpose of protecting the railroads? Closer to the subject of this book, remote channel changers have weakened the “stickiness” of television advertising (if a boring commercial comes on the
TV, the remote makes it easy to surf ), and it may well be that this
change has weakened the television advertising market. But does anyone believe we should regulate remotes to reinforce commercial television? (Maybe by limiting them to function only once a second, or to
switch to only ten channels within an hour?)
The obvious answer to these obviously rhetorical questions is no.
In a free society, with a free market, supported by free enterprise and
free trade, the government’s role is not to support one way of doing

business against others. Its role is not to pick winners and protect
them against loss. If the government did this generally, then we would
never have any progress. As Microsoft chairman Bill Gates wrote in
1991, in a memo criticizing software patents, “established companies
have an interest in excluding future competitors.”6 And relative to a
startup, established companies also have the means. (Think RCA and
FM radio.) A world in which competitors with new ideas must fight
not only the market but also the government is a world in which
competitors with new ideas will not succeed. It is a world of stasis and
increasingly concentrated stagnation. It is the Soviet Union under
Brezhnev.
Thus, while it is understandable for industries threatened with new
technologies that change the way they do business to look to the government for protection, it is the special duty of policy makers to guarantee that that protection not become a deterrent to progress. It is the
duty of policy makers, in other words, to assure that the changes they
create, in response to the request of those hurt by changing technology,
are changes that preserve the incentives and opportunities for innovation and change.
In the context of laws regulating speech—which include, obviously,
copyright law—that duty is even stronger. When the industry complaining about changing technologies is asking Congress to respond in
a way that burdens speech and creativity, policy makers should be especially wary of the request. It is always a bad deal for the government
to get into the business of regulating speech markets. The risks and
dangers of that game are precisely why our framers created the First
Amendment to our Constitution: “Congress shall make no law . . .
abridging the freedom of speech.” So when Congress is being asked to
pass laws that would “abridge” the freedom of speech, it should ask—
carefully—whether such regulation is justified.
My argument just now, however, has nothing to do with whether
the changes that are being pushed by the copyright warriors are “justi-

128 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 129

fied.” My argument is about their effect. For before we get to the question of justification, a hard question that depends a great deal upon
your values, we should first ask whether we understand the effect of the
changes the content industry wants.
Here’s the metaphor that will capture the argument to follow.
In 1873, the chemical DDT was first synthesized. In 1948, Swiss
chemist Paul Hermann Müller won the Nobel Prize for his work
demonstrating the insecticidal properties of DDT. By the 1950s, the
insecticide was widely used around the world to kill disease-carrying
pests. It was also used to increase farm production.
No one doubts that killing disease-carrying pests or increasing crop
production is a good thing. No one doubts that the work of Müller was
important and valuable and probably saved lives, possibly millions.
But in 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, which argued
that DDT, whatever its primary benefits, was also having unintended
environmental consequences. Birds were losing the ability to reproduce. Whole chains of the ecology were being destroyed.
No one set out to destroy the environment. Paul Müller certainly
did not aim to harm any birds. But the effort to solve one set of problems produced another set which, in the view of some, was far worse
than the problems that were originally attacked. Or more accurately,
the problems DDT caused were worse than the problems it solved, at
least when considering the other, more environmentally friendly ways
to solve the problems that DDT was meant to solve.
It is to this image precisely that Duke University law professor James
Boyle appeals when he argues that we need an “environmentalism” for
culture.7 His point, and the point I want to develop in the balance of
this chapter, is not that the aims of copyright are flawed. Or that authors should not be paid for their work. Or that music should be given
away “for free.” The point is that some of the ways in which we might
protect authors will have unintended consequences for the cultural environment, much like DDT had for the natural environment. And just

as criticism of DDT is not an endorsement of malaria or an attack on
farmers, so, too, is criticism of one particular set of regulations protecting copyright not an endorsement of anarchy or an attack on authors.
It is an environment of creativity that we seek, and we should be aware
of our actions’ effects on the environment.
My argument, in the balance of this chapter, tries to map exactly
this effect. No doubt the technology of the Internet has had a dramatic
effect on the ability of copyright owners to protect their content. But
there should also be little doubt that when you add together the
changes in copyright law over time, plus the change in technology that
the Internet is undergoing just now, the net effect of these changes will
not be only that copyrighted work is effectively protected. Also, and
generally missed, the net effect of this massive increase in protection
will be devastating to the environment for creativity.
In a line: To kill a gnat, we are spraying DDT with consequences
for free culture that will be far more devastating than that this gnat will
be lost.

Beginnings

America copied English copyright law. Actually, we copied and improved English copyright law. Our Constitution makes the purpose of
“creative property” rights clear; its express limitations reinforce the English aim to avoid overly powerful publishers.
The power to establish “creative property” rights is granted to Congress in a way that, for our Constitution, at least, is very odd. Article I,
section 8, clause 8 of our Constitution states that:
Congress has the power to promote the Progress of Science and
useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors
the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

130 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 131

We can call this the “Progress Clause,” for notice what this clause does
not say. It does not say Congress has the power to grant “creative property rights.” It says that Congress has the power to promote progress. The
grant of power is its purpose, and its purpose is a public one, not the
purpose of enriching publishers, nor even primarily the purpose of rewarding authors.
The Progress Clause expressly limits the term of copyrights. As we
saw in chapter 6, the English limited the term of copyright so as to assure that a few would not exercise disproportionate control over culture
by exercising disproportionate control over publishing. We can assume
the framers followed the English for a similar purpose. Indeed, unlike
the English, the framers reinforced that objective, by requiring that
copyrights extend “to Authors” only.
The design of the Progress Clause reflects something about the
Constitution’s design in general. To avoid a problem, the framers built
structure. To prevent the concentrated power of publishers, they built
a structure that kept copyrights away from publishers and kept them
short. To prevent the concentrated power of a church, they banned the
federal government from establishing a church. To prevent concentrating power in the federal government, they built structures to reinforce
the power of the states—including the Senate, whose members were
at the time selected by the states, and an electoral college, also selected
by the states, to select the president. In each case, a structure built
checks and balances into the constitutional frame, structured to prevent otherwise inevitable concentrations of power.
I doubt the framers would recognize the regulation we call “copyright” today. The scope of that regulation is far beyond anything they
ever considered. To begin to understand what they did, we need to put
our “copyright” in context: We need to see how it has changed in the
210 years since they first struck its design.
Some of these changes come from the law: some in light of changes
in technology, and some in light of changes in technology given a

particular concentration of market power. In terms of our model, we
started here:

We will end here:

Let me explain how.
132 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 133

Law: Duration

When the first Congress enacted laws to protect creative property, it
faced the same uncertainty about the status of creative property that
the English had confronted in 1774. Many states had passed laws protecting creative property, and some believed that these laws simply
supplemented common law rights that already protected creative authorship.8 This meant that there was no guaranteed public domain in
the United States in 1790. If copyrights were protected by the common law, then there was no simple way to know whether a work published in the United States was controlled or free. Just as in England,
this lingering uncertainty would make it hard for publishers to rely
upon a public domain to reprint and distribute works.
That uncertainty ended after Congress passed legislation granting
copyrights. Because federal law overrides any contrary state law, federal
protections for copyrighted works displaced any state law protections.
Just as in England the Statute of Anne eventually meant that the copyrights for all English works expired, a federal statute meant that any
state copyrights expired as well.
In 1790, Congress enacted the first copyright law. It created a federal copyright and secured that copyright for fourteen years. If the author was alive at the end of that fourteen years, then he could opt to
renew the copyright for another fourteen years. If he did not renew the
copyright, his work passed into the public domain.
While there were many works created in the United States in the
first ten years of the Republic, only 5 percent of the works were actually registered under the federal copyright regime. Of all the work created in the United States both before 1790 and from 1790 through
1800, 95 percent immediately passed into the public domain; the balance would pass into the pubic domain within twenty-eight years at
most, and more likely within fourteen years.9
This system of renewal was a crucial part of the American system
of copyright. It assured that the maximum terms of copyright would be
â&#x20AC;&#x153;PROPERTYâ&#x20AC;? 133

granted only for works where they were wanted. After the initial term
of fourteen years, if it wasn’t worth it to an author to renew his copyright, then it wasn’t worth it to society to insist on the copyright, either.
Fourteen years may not seem long to us, but for the vast majority of
copyright owners at that time, it was long enough: Only a small minority of them renewed their copyright after fourteen years; the balance allowed their work to pass into the public domain.10
Even today, this structure would make sense. Most creative work
has an actual commercial life of just a couple of years. Most books fall
out of print after one year.11 When that happens, the used books are
traded free of copyright regulation. Thus the books are no longer effectively controlled by copyright. The only practical commercial use of the
books at that time is to sell the books as used books; that use—because
it does not involve publication—is effectively free.
In the first hundred years of the Republic, the term of copyright
was changed once. In 1831, the term was increased from a maximum
of 28 years to a maximum of 42 by increasing the initial term of copyright from 14 years to 28 years. In the next fifty years of the Republic,
the term increased once again. In 1909, Congress extended the renewal
term of 14 years to 28 years, setting a maximum term of 56 years.
Then, beginning in 1962, Congress started a practice that has defined copyright law since. Eleven times in the last forty years, Congress
has extended the terms of existing copyrights; twice in those forty
years, Congress extended the term of future copyrights. Initially, the
extensions of existing copyrights were short, a mere one to two years.
In 1976, Congress extended all existing copyrights by nineteen years.
And in 1998, in the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act,
Congress extended the term of existing and future copyrights by
twenty years.
The effect of these extensions is simply to toll, or delay, the passing
of works into the public domain. This latest extension means that the
public domain will have been tolled for thirty-nine out of fifty-five
years, or 70 percent of the time since 1962. Thus, in the twenty years
134 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 135

after the Sonny Bono Act, while one million patents will pass into the
public domain, zero copyrights will pass into the public domain by virtue
of the expiration of a copyright term.
The effect of these extensions has been exacerbated by another,
little-noticed change in the copyright law. Remember I said that the
framers established a two-part copyright regime, requiring a copyright
owner to renew his copyright after an initial term. The requirement of
renewal meant that works that no longer needed copyright protection
would pass more quickly into the public domain. The works remaining
under protection would be those that had some continuing commercial
value.
The United States abandoned this sensible system in 1976. For
all works created after 1978, there was only one copyright term—the
maximum term. For “natural” authors, that term was life plus fifty
years. For corporations, the term was seventy-five years. Then, in 1992,
Congress abandoned the renewal requirement for all works created
before 1978. All works still under copyright would be accorded the
maximum term then available. After the Sonny Bono Act, that term
was ninety-five years.
This change meant that American law no longer had an automatic
way to assure that works that were no longer exploited passed into the
public domain. And indeed, after these changes, it is unclear whether
it is even possible to put works into the public domain. The public domain is orphaned by these changes in copyright law. Despite the requirement that terms be “limited,” we have no evidence that anything
will limit them.
The effect of these changes on the average duration of copyright is
dramatic. In 1973, more than 85 percent of copyright owners failed to
renew their copyright. That meant that the average term of copyright
in 1973 was just 32.2 years. Because of the elimination of the renewal
requirement, the average term of copyright is now the maximum term.
In thirty years, then, the average term has tripled, from 32.2 years to 95
years.12
“PROPERTY” 135

The “scope” of a copyright is the range of rights granted by the law.
The scope of American copyright has changed dramatically. Those
changes are not necessarily bad. But we should understand the extent
of the changes if we’re to keep this debate in context.
In 1790, that scope was very narrow. Copyright covered only “maps,
charts, and books.” That means it didn’t cover, for example, music or
architecture. More significantly, the right granted by a copyright gave
the author the exclusive right to “publish” copyrighted works. That
means someone else violated the copyright only if he republished the
work without the copyright owner’s permission. Finally, the right granted
by a copyright was an exclusive right to that particular book. The right
did not extend to what lawyers call “derivative works.” It would not,
therefore, interfere with the right of someone other than the author to
translate a copyrighted book, or to adapt the story to a different form
(such as a drama based on a published book).
This, too, has changed dramatically. While the contours of copyright today are extremely hard to describe simply, in general terms, the
right covers practically any creative work that is reduced to a tangible
form. It covers music as well as architecture, drama as well as computer
programs. It gives the copyright owner of that creative work not only
the exclusive right to “publish” the work, but also the exclusive right of
control over any “copies” of that work. And most significant for our
purposes here, the right gives the copyright owner control over not
only his or her particular work, but also any “derivative work” that might
grow out of the original work. In this way, the right covers more creative work, protects the creative work more broadly, and protects works
that are based in a significant way on the initial creative work.
At the same time that the scope of copyright has expanded, procedural limitations on the right have been relaxed. I’ve already described
the complete removal of the renewal requirement in 1992. In addition
to the renewal requirement, for most of the history of American copy136 FREE CULTURE

The act left other creators totally unregulated. If I copied your
poem by hand, over and over again, as a way to learn it by heart, my
act was totally unregulated by the 1790 act. If I took your novel and
made a play based upon it, or if I translated it or abridged it, none of
those activities were regulated by the original copyright act. These creative activities remained free, while the activities of publishers were restrained.
Today the story is very different: If you write a book, your book is
automatically protected. Indeed, not just your book. Every e-mail,
every note to your spouse, every doodle, every creative act that’s reduced to a tangible form—all of this is automatically copyrighted.
There is no need to register or mark your work. The protection follows
the creation, not the steps you take to protect it.
That protection gives you the right (subject to a narrow range of
fair use exceptions) to control how others copy the work, whether they
copy it to republish it or to share an excerpt.
That much is the obvious part. Any system of copyright would control competing publishing. But there’s a second part to the copyright of
today that is not at all obvious. This is the protection of “derivative
rights.” If you write a book, no one can make a movie out of your
book without permission. No one can translate it without permission.
CliffsNotes can’t make an abridgment unless permission is granted. All
of these derivative uses of your original work are controlled by the
copyright holder. The copyright, in other words, is now not just an exclusive right to your writings, but an exclusive right to your writings
and a large proportion of the writings inspired by them.
It is this derivative right that would seem most bizarre to our
framers, though it has become second nature to us. Initially, this expansion was created to deal with obvious evasions of a narrower copyright. If I write a book, can you change one word and then claim a
copyright in a new and different book? Obviously that would make a
joke of the copyright, so the law was properly expanded to include
those slight modifications as well as the verbatim original work.
138 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 139

In preventing that joke, the law created an astonishing power within
a free culture—at least, it’s astonishing when you understand that the
law applies not just to the commercial publisher but to anyone with a
computer. I understand the wrong in duplicating and selling someone
else’s work. But whatever that wrong is, transforming someone else’s
work is a different wrong. Some view transformation as no wrong at
all—they believe that our law, as the framers penned it, should not protect derivative rights at all.14 Whether or not you go that far, it seems
plain that whatever wrong is involved is fundamentally different from
the wrong of direct piracy.
Yet copyright law treats these two different wrongs in the same
way. I can go to court and get an injunction against your pirating my
book. I can go to court and get an injunction against your transformative use of my book.15 These two different uses of my creative work are
treated the same.
This again may seem right to you. If I wrote a book, then why
should you be able to write a movie that takes my story and makes
money from it without paying me or crediting me? Or if Disney creates a creature called “Mickey Mouse,” why should you be able to make
Mickey Mouse toys and be the one to trade on the value that Disney
originally created?
These are good arguments, and, in general, my point is not that the
derivative right is unjustified. My aim just now is much narrower: simply to make clear that this expansion is a significant change from the
rights originally granted.

Law and Architecture: Reach

Whereas originally the law regulated only publishers, the change in
copyright’s scope means that the law today regulates publishers, users,
and authors. It regulates them because all three are capable of making
copies, and the core of the regulation of copyright law is copies.16
“PROPERTY” 139

“Copies.” That certainly sounds like the obvious thing for copyright
law to regulate. But as with Jack Valenti’s argument at the start of this
chapter, that “creative property” deserves the “same rights” as all other
property, it is the obvious that we need to be most careful about. For
while it may be obvious that in the world before the Internet, copies
were the obvious trigger for copyright law, upon reflection, it should be
obvious that in the world with the Internet, copies should not be the
trigger for copyright law. More precisely, they should not always be the
trigger for copyright law.
This is perhaps the central claim of this book, so let me take this
very slowly so that the point is not easily missed. My claim is that the
Internet should at least force us to rethink the conditions under which
the law of copyright automatically applies,17 because it is clear that the
current reach of copyright was never contemplated, much less chosen,
by the legislators who enacted copyright law.
We can see this point abstractly by beginning with this largely
empty circle.

140 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 141

Think about a book in real space, and imagine this circle to represent all its potential uses. Most of these uses are unregulated by copyright
law, because the uses don’t create a copy. If you read a book, that act is not
regulated by copyright law. If you give someone the book, that act is
not regulated by copyright law. If you resell a book, that act is not regulated (copyright law expressly states that after the first sale of a book,
the copyright owner can impose no further conditions on the disposition of the book). If you sleep on the book or use it to hold up a lamp or
let your puppy chew it up, those acts are not regulated by copyright law,
because those acts do not make a copy.

Obviously, however, some uses of a copyrighted book are regulated
by copyright law. Republishing the book, for example, makes a copy. It
is therefore regulated by copyright law. Indeed, this particular use stands
at the core of this circle of possible uses of a copyrighted work. It is the
paradigmatic use properly regulated by copyright regulation (see first
diagram on next page).
Finally, there is a tiny sliver of otherwise regulated copying uses
that remain unregulated because the law considers these “fair uses.”
“PROPERTY” 141

These are uses that themselves involve copying, but which the law treats
as unregulated because public policy demands that they remain unregulated. You are free to quote from this book, even in a review that
is quite negative, without my permission, even though that quoting
makes a copy. That copy would ordinarily give the copyright owner the
exclusive right to say whether the copy is allowed or not, but the law
denies the owner any exclusive right over such â&#x20AC;&#x153;fair usesâ&#x20AC;? for public
policy (and possibly First Amendment) reasons.

142 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 143

In real space, then, the possible uses of a book are divided into three
sorts: (1) unregulated uses, (2) regulated uses, and (3) regulated uses that
are nonetheless deemed “fair” regardless of the copyright owner’s views.
Enter the Internet—a distributed, digital network where every use
of a copyrighted work produces a copy.18 And because of this single,
arbitrary feature of the design of a digital network, the scope of category 1 changes dramatically. Uses that before were presumptively unregulated are now presumptively regulated. No longer is there a set of
presumptively unregulated uses that define a freedom associated with a
copyrighted work. Instead, each use is now subject to the copyright,
because each use also makes a copy—category 1 gets sucked into category 2. And those who would defend the unregulated uses of copyrighted work must look exclusively to category 3, fair uses, to bear the
burden of this shift.
So let’s be very specific to make this general point clear. Before the
Internet, if you purchased a book and read it ten times, there would be
no plausible copyright-related argument that the copyright owner could
make to control that use of her book. Copyright law would have nothing to say about whether you read the book once, ten times, or every
“PROPERTY” 143

night before you went to bed. None of those instances of use—reading—
could be regulated by copyright law because none of those uses produced a copy.
But the same book as an e-book is effectively governed by a different set of rules. Now if the copyright owner says you may read the book
only once or only once a month, then copyright law would aid the copyright owner in exercising this degree of control, because of the accidental feature of copyright law that triggers its application upon there
being a copy. Now if you read the book ten times and the license says
you may read it only five times, then whenever you read the book (or
any portion of it) beyond the fifth time, you are making a copy of the
book contrary to the copyright owner’s wish.
There are some people who think this makes perfect sense. My aim
just now is not to argue about whether it makes sense or not. My aim
is only to make clear the change. Once you see this point, a few other
points also become clear:
First, making category 1 disappear is not anything any policy maker
ever intended. Congress did not think through the collapse of the presumptively unregulated uses of copyrighted works. There is no evidence at all that policy makers had this idea in mind when they allowed
our policy here to shift. Unregulated uses were an important part of
free culture before the Internet.
Second, this shift is especially troubling in the context of transformative uses of creative content. Again, we can all understand the wrong
in commercial piracy. But the law now purports to regulate any transformation you make of creative work using a machine. “Copy and paste”
and “cut and paste” become crimes. Tinkering with a story and releasing it to others exposes the tinkerer to at least a requirement of justification. However troubling the expansion with respect to copying a
particular work, it is extraordinarily troubling with respect to transformative uses of creative work.
Third, this shift from category 1 to category 2 puts an extraordinary

144 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 145

burden on category 3 (“fair use”) that fair use never before had to bear.
If a copyright owner now tried to control how many times I could read
a book on-line, the natural response would be to argue that this is a
violation of my fair use rights. But there has never been any litigation
about whether I have a fair use right to read, because before the Internet, reading did not trigger the application of copyright law and hence
the need for a fair use defense. The right to read was effectively protected before because reading was not regulated.
This point about fair use is totally ignored, even by advocates for
free culture. We have been cornered into arguing that our rights depend upon fair use—never even addressing the earlier question about
the expansion in effective regulation. A thin protection grounded in
fair use makes sense when the vast majority of uses are unregulated. But
when everything becomes presumptively regulated, then the protections of fair use are not enough.
The case of Video Pipeline is a good example. Video Pipeline was
in the business of making “trailer” advertisements for movies available
to video stores. The video stores displayed the trailers as a way to sell
videos. Video Pipeline got the trailers from the film distributors, put
the trailers on tape, and sold the tapes to the retail stores.
The company did this for about fifteen years. Then, in 1997, it began to think about the Internet as another way to distribute these previews. The idea was to expand their “selling by sampling” technique by
giving on-line stores the same ability to enable “browsing.” Just as in a
bookstore you can read a few pages of a book before you buy the book,
so, too, you would be able to sample a bit from the movie on-line before you bought it.
In 1998, Video Pipeline informed Disney and other film distributors that it intended to distribute the trailers through the Internet
(rather than sending the tapes) to distributors of their videos. Two
years later, Disney told Video Pipeline to stop. The owner of Video
Pipeline asked Disney to talk about the matter—he had built a busi-

ness on distributing this content as a way to help sell Disney films; he
had customers who depended upon his delivering this content. Disney
would agree to talk only if Video Pipeline stopped the distribution immediately. Video Pipeline thought it was within their “fair use” rights
to distribute the clips as they had. So they filed a lawsuit to ask the
court to declare that these rights were in fact their rights.
Disney countersued—for $100 million in damages. Those damages
were predicated upon a claim that Video Pipeline had “willfully infringed” on Disney’s copyright. When a court makes a finding of willful infringement, it can award damages not on the basis of the actual
harm to the copyright owner, but on the basis of an amount set in the
statute. Because Video Pipeline had distributed seven hundred clips of
Disney movies to enable video stores to sell copies of those movies,
Disney was now suing Video Pipeline for $100 million.
Disney has the right to control its property, of course. But the video
stores that were selling Disney’s films also had some sort of right to be
able to sell the films that they had bought from Disney. Disney’s claim
in court was that the stores were allowed to sell the films and they were
permitted to list the titles of the films they were selling, but they were
not allowed to show clips of the films as a way of selling them without
Disney’s permission.
Now, you might think this is a close case, and I think the courts would
consider it a close case. My point here is to map the change that gives
Disney this power. Before the Internet, Disney couldn’t really control
how people got access to their content. Once a video was in the marketplace, the “first-sale doctrine” would free the seller to use the video as he
wished, including showing portions of it in order to engender sales of the
entire movie video. But with the Internet, it becomes possible for Disney
to centralize control over access to this content. Because each use of the
Internet produces a copy, use on the Internet becomes subject to the
copyright owner’s control. The technology expands the scope of effective
control, because the technology builds a copy into every transaction.
No doubt, a potential is not yet an abuse, and so the potential for con146 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:51 PM Page 147

trol is not yet the abuse of control. Barnes & Noble has the right to say
you can’t touch a book in their store; property law gives them that right.
But the market effectively protects against that abuse. If Barnes & Noble banned browsing, then consumers would choose other bookstores.
Competition protects against the extremes. And it may well be (my argument so far does not even question this) that competition would prevent
any similar danger when it comes to copyright. Sure, publishers exercising the rights that authors have assigned to them might try to regulate
how many times you read a book, or try to stop you from sharing the book
with anyone. But in a competitive market such as the book market, the
dangers of this happening are quite slight.
Again, my aim so far is simply to map the changes that this changed
architecture enables. Enabling technology to enforce the control of
copyright means that the control of copyright is no longer defined by
balanced policy. The control of copyright is simply what private owners choose. In some contexts, at least, that fact is harmless. But in some
contexts it is a recipe for disaster.

Architecture and Law: Force

The disappearance of unregulated uses would be change enough, but a
second important change brought about by the Internet magnifies its
significance. This second change does not affect the reach of copyright
regulation; it affects how such regulation is enforced.
In the world before digital technology, it was generally the law that
controlled whether and how someone was regulated by copyright law.
The law, meaning a court, meaning a judge: In the end, it was a human,
trained in the tradition of the law and cognizant of the balances that
tradition embraced, who said whether and how the law would restrict
your freedom.
There’s a famous story about a battle between the Marx Brothers
and Warner Brothers. The Marxes intended to make a parody of
“PROPERTY” 147

Casablanca. Warner Brothers objected. They wrote a nasty letter to the
Marxes, warning them that there would be serious legal consequences
if they went forward with their plan.19
This led the Marx Brothers to respond in kind. They warned
Warner Brothers that the Marx Brothers â&#x20AC;&#x153;were brothers long before
you were.â&#x20AC;?20 The Marx Brothers therefore owned the word brothers,
and if Warner Brothers insisted on trying to control Casablanca, then
the Marx Brothers would insist on control over brothers.
An absurd and hollow threat, of course, because Warner Brothers,
like the Marx Brothers, knew that no court would ever enforce such a
silly claim. This extremism was irrelevant to the real freedoms anyone
(including Warner Brothers) enjoyed.
On the Internet, however, there is no check on silly rules, because
on the Internet, increasingly, rules are enforced not by a human but by
a machine: Increasingly, the rules of copyright law, as interpreted by
the copyright owner, get built into the technology that delivers copyrighted content. It is code, rather than law, that rules. And the problem
with code regulations is that, unlike law, code has no shame. Code
would not get the humor of the Marx Brothers. The consequence of
that is not at all funny.
Consider the life of my Adobe eBook Reader.
An e-book is a book delivered in electronic form. An Adobe eBook
is not a book that Adobe has published; Adobe simply produces the
software that publishers use to deliver e-books. It provides the technology, and the publisher delivers the content by using the technology.
On the next page is a picture of an old version of my Adobe eBook
Reader.
As you can see, I have a small collection of e-books within this
e-book library. Some of these books reproduce content that is in the
public domain: Middlemarch, for example, is in the public domain.
Some of them reproduce content that is not in the public domain: My
own book The Future of Ideas is not yet within the public domain.
Consider Middlemarch first. If you click on my e-book copy of
148 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:52 PM Page 149

Middlemarch, you’ll see a fancy cover, and then a button at the bottom
called Permissions.
If you click on the Permissions button, you’ll see a list of the permissions that the publisher purports to grant with this book.

According to my eBook
Reader, I have the permission
to copy to the clipboard of the
computer ten text selections
every ten days. (So far, I’ve
copied no text to the clipboard.)
I also have the permission to
print ten pages from the book
every ten days. Lastly, I have
the permission to use the Read
Aloud button to hear Middlemarch read aloud through the
computer.
Here’s the e-book for another
work in the public domain (including the translation): Aristotle’s Politics.
According to its permissions, no printing or copying is permitted
at all. But fortunately, you can use the Read Aloud button to hear
the book.

Finally (and most embarrassingly), here are the permissions for the
original e-book version of my last book, The Future of Ideas:
150 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:52 PM Page 151

No copying, no printing, and don’t you dare try to listen to this book!
Now, the Adobe eBook Reader calls these controls “permissions”—
as if the publisher has the power to control how you use these works.
For works under copyright, the copyright owner certainly does have
the power—up to the limits of the copyright law. But for work not under copyright, there is no such copyright power.21 When my e-book of
Middlemarch says I have the permission to copy only ten text selections
into the memory every ten days, what that really means is that the
eBook Reader has enabled the publisher to control how I use the book
on my computer, far beyond the control that the law would enable.
The control comes instead from the code—from the technology
within which the e-book “lives.” Though the e-book says that these are
permissions, they are not the sort of “permissions” that most of us deal
with. When a teenager gets “permission” to stay out till midnight, she
knows (unless she’s Cinderella) that she can stay out till 2 A.M., but
will suffer a punishment if she’s caught. But when the Adobe eBook
Reader says I have the permission to make ten copies of the text into
the computer’s memory, that means that after I’ve made ten copies, the
computer will not make any more. The same with the printing restrictions: After ten pages, the eBook Reader will not print any more pages.
It’s the same with the silly restriction that says that you can’t use the
Read Aloud button to read my book aloud—it’s not that the company
will sue you if you do; instead, if you push the Read Aloud button with
my book, the machine simply won’t read aloud.
“PROPERTY” 151

These are controls, not permissions. Imagine a world where the
Marx Brothers sold word processing software that, when you tried to
type “Warner Brothers,” erased “Brothers” from the sentence.
This is the future of copyright law: not so much copyright law as
copyright code. The controls over access to content will not be controls
that are ratified by courts; the controls over access to content will be
controls that are coded by programmers. And whereas the controls that
are built into the law are always to be checked by a judge, the controls
that are built into the technology have no similar built-in check.
How significant is this? Isn’t it always possible to get around the
controls built into the technology? Software used to be sold with technologies that limited the ability of users to copy the software, but those
were trivial protections to defeat. Why won’t it be trivial to defeat these
protections as well?
We’ve only scratched the surface of this story. Return to the Adobe
eBook Reader.
Early in the life of the Adobe eBook Reader, Adobe suffered a public relations nightmare. Among the books that you could download for
free on the Adobe site was a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
This wonderful book is in the public domain. Yet when you clicked on
Permissions for that book, you got the following report:

152 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:52 PM Page 153

Here was a public domain children’s book that you were not allowed to copy, not allowed to lend, not allowed to give, and, as the “permissions” indicated, not allowed to “read aloud”!
The public relations nightmare attached to that final permission.
For the text did not say that you were not permitted to use the Read
Aloud button; it said you did not have the permission to read the book
aloud. That led some people to think that Adobe was restricting the
right of parents, for example, to read the book to their children, which
seemed, to say the least, absurd.
Adobe responded quickly that it was absurd to think that it was trying to restrict the right to read a book aloud. Obviously it was only restricting the ability to use the Read Aloud button to have the book read
aloud. But the question Adobe never did answer is this: Would Adobe
thus agree that a consumer was free to use software to hack around the
restrictions built into the eBook Reader? If some company (call it
Elcomsoft) developed a program to disable the technological protection built into an Adobe eBook so that a blind person, say, could use a
computer to read the book aloud, would Adobe agree that such a use of
an eBook Reader was fair? Adobe didn’t answer because the answer,
however absurd it might seem, is no.
The point is not to blame Adobe. Indeed, Adobe is among the most
innovative companies developing strategies to balance open access to
content with incentives for companies to innovate. But Adobe’s technology enables control, and Adobe has an incentive to defend this control. That incentive is understandable, yet what it creates is often crazy.
To see the point in a particularly absurd context, consider a favorite
story of mine that makes the same point.
Consider the robotic dog made by Sony named “Aibo.” The Aibo
learns tricks, cuddles, and follows you around. It eats only electricity
and that doesn’t leave that much of a mess (at least in your house).
The Aibo is expensive and popular. Fans from around the world
have set up clubs to trade stories. One fan in particular set up a Web
site to enable information about the Aibo dog to be shared. This fan set
“PROPERTY” 153

up aibopet.com (and aibohack.com, but that resolves to the same site),
and on that site he provided information about how to teach an Aibo
to do tricks in addition to the ones Sony had taught it.
“Teach” here has a special meaning. Aibos are just cute computers.
You teach a computer how to do something by programming it differently. So to say that aibopet.com was giving information about how to
teach the dog to do new tricks is just to say that aibopet.com was giving information to users of the Aibo pet about how to hack their computer “dog” to make it do new tricks (thus, aibohack.com).
If you’re not a programmer or don’t know many programmers, the
word hack has a particularly unfriendly connotation. Nonprogrammers
hack bushes or weeds. Nonprogrammers in horror movies do even
worse. But to programmers, or coders, as I call them, hack is a much
more positive term. Hack just means code that enables the program to
do something it wasn’t originally intended or enabled to do. If you buy
a new printer for an old computer, you might find the old computer
doesn’t run, or “drive,” the printer. If you discovered that, you’d later be
happy to discover a hack on the Net by someone who has written a
driver to enable the computer to drive the printer you just bought.
Some hacks are easy. Some are unbelievably hard. Hackers as a
community like to challenge themselves and others with increasingly
difficult tasks. There’s a certain respect that goes with the talent to hack
well. There’s a well-deserved respect that goes with the talent to hack
ethically.
The Aibo fan was displaying a bit of both when he hacked the program and offered to the world a bit of code that would enable the Aibo
to dance jazz. The dog wasn’t programmed to dance jazz. It was a
clever bit of tinkering that turned the dog into a more talented creature
than Sony had built.
I’ve told this story in many contexts, both inside and outside the
United States. Once I was asked by a puzzled member of the audience,
is it permissible for a dog to dance jazz in the United States? We forget that stories about the backcountry still flow across much of the
154 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:52 PM Page 155

world. So let’s just be clear before we continue: It’s not a crime anywhere (anymore) to dance jazz. Nor is it a crime to teach your dog to
dance jazz. Nor should it be a crime (though we don’t have a lot to go
on here) to teach your robot dog to dance jazz. Dancing jazz is a completely legal activity. One imagines that the owner of aibopet.com
thought, What possible problem could there be with teaching a robot dog to
dance?
Let’s put the dog to sleep for a minute, and turn to a pony show—
not literally a pony show, but rather a paper that a Princeton academic
named Ed Felten prepared for a conference. This Princeton academic
is well known and respected. He was hired by the government in the
Microsoft case to test Microsoft’s claims about what could and could
not be done with its own code. In that trial, he demonstrated both his
brilliance and his coolness. Under heavy badgering by Microsoft
lawyers, Ed Felten stood his ground. He was not about to be bullied
into being silent about something he knew very well.
But Felten’s bravery was really tested in April 2001.22 He and a
group of colleagues were working on a paper to be submitted at conference. The paper was intended to describe the weakness in an encryption system being developed by the Secure Digital Music Initiative as
a technique to control the distribution of music.
The SDMI coalition had as its goal a technology to enable content
owners to exercise much better control over their content than the Internet, as it originally stood, granted them. Using encryption, SDMI
hoped to develop a standard that would allow the content owner to say
“this music cannot be copied,” and have a computer respect that command. The technology was to be part of a “trusted system” of control
that would get content owners to trust the system of the Internet much
more.
When SDMI thought it was close to a standard, it set up a competition. In exchange for providing contestants with the code to an
SDMI-encrypted bit of content, contestants were to try to crack it
and, if they did, report the problems to the consortium.
“PROPERTY” 155

Felten and his team figured out the encryption system quickly. He
and the team saw the weakness of this system as a type: Many encryption systems would suffer the same weakness, and Felten and his team
thought it worthwhile to point this out to those who study encryption.
Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s review just what Felten was doing. Again, this is the United
States. We have a principle of free speech. We have this principle not
just because it is the law, but also because it is a really great idea. A
strongly protected tradition of free speech is likely to encourage a wide
range of criticism. That criticism is likely, in turn, to improve the systems or people or ideas criticized.
What Felten and his colleagues were doing was publishing a paper
describing the weakness in a technology. They were not spreading free
music, or building and deploying this technology. The paper was an
academic essay, unintelligible to most people. But it clearly showed the
weakness in the SDMI system, and why SDMI would not, as presently
constituted, succeed.
What links these two, aibopet.com and Felten, is the letters they
then received. Aibopet.com received a letter from Sony about the
aibopet.com hack. Though a jazz-dancing dog is perfectly legal, Sony
wrote:
Your site contains information providing the means to circumvent
AIBO-wareâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s copy protection protocol constituting a violation of
the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

And though an academic paper describing the weakness in a system
of encryption should also be perfectly legal, Felten received a letter
from an RIAA lawyer that read:
Any disclosure of information gained from participating in the
Public Challenge would be outside the scope of activities permit-

156 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:52 PM Page 157

ted by the Agreement and could subject you and your research
team to actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(“DMCA”).

In both cases, this weirdly Orwellian law was invoked to control the
spread of information. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act made
spreading such information an offense.
The DMCA was enacted as a response to copyright owners’ first fear
about cyberspace. The fear was that copyright control was effectively
dead; the response was to find technologies that might compensate.
These new technologies would be copyright protection technologies—
technologies to control the replication and distribution of copyrighted
material. They were designed as code to modify the original code of the
Internet, to reestablish some protection for copyright owners.
The DMCA was a bit of law intended to back up the protection of
this code designed to protect copyrighted material. It was, we could
say, legal code intended to buttress software code which itself was intended to support the legal code of copyright.
But the DMCA was not designed merely to protect copyrighted
works to the extent copyright law protected them. Its protection, that
is, did not end at the line that copyright law drew. The DMCA regulated devices that were designed to circumvent copyright protection
measures. It was designed to ban those devices, whether or not the use
of the copyrighted material made possible by that circumvention
would have been a copyright violation.
Aibopet.com and Felten make the point. The Aibo hack circumvented a copyright protection system for the purpose of enabling the
dog to dance jazz. That enablement no doubt involved the use of copyrighted material. But as aibopet.com’s site was noncommercial, and the
use did not enable subsequent copyright infringements, there’s no doubt
that aibopet.com’s hack was fair use of Sony’s copyrighted material. Yet
fair use is not a defense to the DMCA. The question is not whether the

use of the copyrighted material was a copyright violation. The question
is whether a copyright protection system was circumvented.
The threat against Felten was more attenuated, but it followed the
same line of reasoning. By publishing a paper describing how a copyright protection system could be circumvented, the RIAA lawyer suggested, Felten himself was distributing a circumvention technology.
Thus, even though he was not himself infringing anyone’s copyright,
his academic paper was enabling others to infringe others’ copyright.
The bizarreness of these arguments is captured in a cartoon drawn
in 1981 by Paul Conrad. At that time, a court in California had held
that the VCR could be banned because it was a copyright-infringing
technology: It enabled consumers to copy films without the permission
of the copyright owner. No doubt there were uses of the technology
that were legal: Fred Rogers, aka “Mr. Rogers,” for example, had testified in that case that he wanted people to feel free to tape Mr. Rogers’
Neighborhood.
Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the
“Neighborhood” at hours when some children cannot use it. I
think that it’s a real service to families to be able to record such
programs and show them at appropriate times. I have always felt
that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows
people to tape the “Neighborhood” off-the-air, and I’m speaking for the “Neighborhood” because that’s what I produce,
that they then become much more active in the programming of
their family’s television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people
being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been “You are an important person just the way
you are. You can make healthy decisions.” Maybe I’m going on
too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be
more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is
important.23

158 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:52 PM Page 159

Even though there were uses that were legal, because there were
some uses that were illegal, the court held the companies producing
the VCR responsible.
This led Conrad to draw the cartoon below, which we can adopt to
the DMCA.
No argument I have can top this picture, but let me try to get close.
The anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA target copyright
circumvention technologies. Circumvention technologies can be used
for different ends. They can be used, for example, to enable massive pirating of copyrighted material—a bad end. Or they can be used to enable the use of particular copyrighted materials in ways that would be
considered fair use—a good end.
A handgun can be used to shoot a police officer or a child. Most

would agree such a use is bad. Or a handgun can be used for target
practice or to protect against an intruder. At least some would say that
such a use would be good. It, too, is a technology that has both good
and bad uses.
The obvious point of Conrad’s cartoon is the weirdness of a world
where guns are legal, despite the harm they can do, while VCRs (and
circumvention technologies) are illegal. Flash: No one ever died from
copyright circumvention. Yet the law bans circumvention technologies
absolutely, despite the potential that they might do some good, but
permits guns, despite the obvious and tragic harm they do.
The Aibo and RIAA examples demonstrate how copyright owners
are changing the balance that copyright law grants. Using code, copyright owners restrict fair use; using the DMCA, they punish those who
would attempt to evade the restrictions on fair use that they impose
through code. Technology becomes a means by which fair use can be
erased; the law of the DMCA backs up that erasing.
This is how code becomes law. The controls built into the technology
of copy and access protection become rules the violation of which is also
a violation of the law. In this way, the code extends the law—increasing its
regulation, even if the subject it regulates (activities that would otherwise
plainly constitute fair use) is beyond the reach of the law. Code becomes
law; code extends the law; code thus extends the control that copyright
owners effect—at least for those copyright holders with the lawyers
who can write the nasty letters that Felten and aibopet.com received.
There is one final aspect of the interaction between architecture
and law that contributes to the force of copyright’s regulation. This is
the ease with which infringements of the law can be detected. For
contrary to the rhetoric common at the birth of cyberspace that on the
Internet, no one knows you’re a dog, increasingly, given changing technologies deployed on the Internet, it is easy to find the dog who committed a legal wrong. The technologies of the Internet are open to
snoops as well as sharers, and the snoops are increasingly good at tracking down the identity of those who violate the rules.
160 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:52 PM Page 161

For example, imagine you were part of a Star Trek fan club. You
gathered every month to share trivia, and maybe to enact a kind of fan
fiction about the show. One person would play Spock, another, Captain Kirk. The characters would begin with a plot from a real story,
then simply continue it.24
Before the Internet, this was, in effect, a totally unregulated activity. No matter what happened inside your club room, you would never
be interfered with by the copyright police. You were free in that space
to do as you wished with this part of our culture. You were allowed to
build on it as you wished without fear of legal control.
But if you moved your club onto the Internet, and made it generally
available for others to join, the story would be very different. Bots scouring the Net for trademark and copyright infringement would quickly
find your site. Your posting of fan fiction, depending upon the ownership of the series that you’re depicting, could well inspire a lawyer’s
threat. And ignoring the lawyer’s threat would be extremely costly indeed. The law of copyright is extremely efficient. The penalties are severe, and the process is quick.
This change in the effective force of the law is caused by a change
in the ease with which the law can be enforced. That change too shifts
the law’s balance radically. It is as if your car transmitted the speed at
which you traveled at every moment that you drove; that would be just
one step before the state started issuing tickets based upon the data you
transmitted. That is, in effect, what is happening here.

Market: Concentration

So copyright’s duration has increased dramatically—tripled in the past
thirty years. And copyright’s scope has increased as well—from regulating only publishers to now regulating just about everyone. And
copyright’s reach has changed, as every action becomes a copy and
hence presumptively regulated. And as technologists find better ways
“PROPERTY” 161

to control the use of content, and as copyright is increasingly enforced
through technology, copyright’s force changes, too. Misuse is easier to
find and easier to control. This regulation of the creative process, which
began as a tiny regulation governing a tiny part of the market for creative work, has become the single most important regulator of creativity there is. It is a massive expansion in the scope of the government’s
control over innovation and creativity; it would be totally unrecognizable to those who gave birth to copyright’s control.
Still, in my view, all of these changes would not matter much if it
weren’t for one more change that we must also consider. This is a
change that is in some sense the most familiar, though its significance
and scope are not well understood. It is the one that creates precisely the
reason to be concerned about all the other changes I have described.
This is the change in the concentration and integration of the media.
In the past twenty years, the nature of media ownership has undergone
a radical alteration, caused by changes in legal rules governing the media. Before this change happened, the different forms of media were
owned by separate media companies. Now, the media is increasingly
owned by only a few companies. Indeed, after the changes that the
FCC announced in June 2003, most expect that within a few years, we
will live in a world where just three companies control more than 85
percent of the media.
These changes are of two sorts: the scope of concentration, and its
nature.
Changes in scope are the easier ones to describe. As Senator John
McCain summarized the data produced in the FCC’s review of media
ownership, “five companies control 85 percent of our media sources.”25
The five recording labels of Universal Music Group, BMG, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI control 84.8 percent of the U.S. music market.26 The “five largest cable companies pipe
programming to 74 percent of the cable subscribers nationwide.”27
The story with radio is even more dramatic. Before deregulation,
the nation’s largest radio broadcasting conglomerate owned fewer than
162 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:52 PM Page 163

seventy-five stations. Today one company owns more than 1,200 stations.
During that period of consolidation, the total number of radio owners
dropped by 34 percent. Today, in most markets, the two largest broadcasters control 74 percent of that market’s revenues. Overall, just four
companies control 90 percent of the nation’s radio advertising revenues.
Newspaper ownership is becoming more concentrated as well. Today, there are six hundred fewer daily newspapers in the United States
than there were eighty years ago, and ten companies control half of the
nation’s circulation. There are twenty major newspaper publishers in
the United States. The top ten film studios receive 99 percent of all
film revenue. The ten largest cable companies account for 85 percent of
all cable revenue. This is a market far from the free press the framers
sought to protect. Indeed, it is a market that is quite well protected—
by the market.
Concentration in size alone is one thing. The more invidious
change is in the nature of that concentration. As author James Fallows
put it in a recent article about Rupert Murdoch,
Murdoch’s companies now constitute a production system unmatched in its integration. They supply content—Fox movies . . .
Fox TV shows . . . Fox-controlled sports broadcasts, plus newspapers and books. They sell the content to the public and to advertisers—in newspapers, on the broadcast network, on the cable
channels. And they operate the physical distribution system
through which the content reaches the customers. Murdoch’s
satellite systems now distribute News Corp. content in Europe
and Asia; if Murdoch becomes DirecTV’s largest single owner,
that system will serve the same function in the United States.28

The pattern with Murdoch is the pattern of modern media. Not
just large companies owning many radio stations, but a few companies
owning as many outlets of media as possible. A picture describes this
pattern better than a thousand words could do:
“PROPERTY” 163

Does this concentration matter? Will it affect what is made, or
what is distributed? Or is it merely a more efficient way to produce and
distribute content?
My view was that concentration wouldn’t matter. I thought it was
nothing more than a more efficient financial structure. But now, after
reading and listening to a barrage of creators try to convince me to the
contrary, I am beginning to change my mind.
Here’s a representative story that begins to suggest how this integration may matter.
In 1969, Norman Lear created a pilot for All in the Family. He took
the pilot to ABC. The network didn’t like it. It was too edgy, they told
Lear. Make it again. Lear made a second pilot, more edgy than the
first. ABC was exasperated. You’re missing the point, they told Lear.
We wanted less edgy, not more.
Rather than comply, Lear simply took the show elsewhere. CBS
was happy to have the series; ABC could not stop Lear from walking.
The copyrights that Lear held assured an independence from network
control.29
164 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:52 PM Page 165

The network did not control those copyrights because the law forbade the networks from controlling the content they syndicated. The
law required a separation between the networks and the content producers; that separation would guarantee Lear freedom. And as late as
1992, because of these rules, the vast majority of prime time television—75 percent of it—was “independent” of the networks.
In 1994, the FCC abandoned the rules that required this independence. After that change, the networks quickly changed the balance.
In 1985, there were twenty-five independent television production studios; in 2002, only five independent television studios remained. “In
1992, only 15 percent of new series were produced for a network by a
company it controlled. Last year, the percentage of shows produced by
controlled companies more than quintupled to 77 percent.” “In 1992,
16 new series were produced independently of conglomerate control,
last year there was one.”30 In 2002, 75 percent of prime time television
was owned by the networks that ran it. “In the ten-year period between
1992 and 2002, the number of prime time television hours per week
produced by network studios increased over 200%, whereas the number of prime time television hours per week produced by independent
studios decreased 63%.”31
Today, another Norman Lear with another All in the Family would
find that he had the choice either to make the show less edgy or to be
fired: The content of any show developed for a network is increasingly
owned by the network.
While the number of channels has increased dramatically, the ownership of those channels has narrowed to an ever smaller and smaller
few. As Barry Diller said to Bill Moyers,
Well, if you have companies that produce, that finance, that air on
their channel and then distribute worldwide everything that goes
through their controlled distribution system, then what you get is
fewer and fewer actual voices participating in the process. [We
u]sed to have dozens and dozens of thriving independent produc“PROPERTY” 165

tion companies producing television programs. Now you have less
than a handful.32

This narrowing has an effect on what is produced. The product of
such large and concentrated networks is increasingly homogenous. Increasingly safe. Increasingly sterile. The product of news shows from
networks like this is increasingly tailored to the message the network
wants to convey. This is not the communist party, though from the inside, it must feel a bit like the communist party. No one can question
without risk of consequence—not necessarily banishment to Siberia,
but punishment nonetheless. Independent, critical, different views are
quashed. This is not the environment for a democracy.
Economics itself offers a parallel that explains why this integration
affects creativity. Clay Christensen has written about the “Innovator’s
Dilemma”: the fact that large traditional firms find it rational to ignore
new, breakthrough technologies that compete with their core business.
The same analysis could help explain why large, traditional media
companies would find it rational to ignore new cultural trends.33 Lumbering giants not only don’t, but should not, sprint. Yet if the field is
only open to the giants, there will be far too little sprinting.
I don’t think we know enough about the economics of the media
market to say with certainty what concentration and integration will
do. The efficiencies are important, and the effect on culture is hard to
measure.
But there is a quintessentially obvious example that does strongly
suggest the concern.
In addition to the copyright wars, we’re in the middle of the drug
wars. Government policy is strongly directed against the drug cartels;
criminal and civil courts are filled with the consequences of this battle.
Let me hereby disqualify myself from any possible appointment to
any position in government by saying I believe this war is a profound
mistake. I am not pro drugs. Indeed, I come from a family once

166 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:52 PM Page 167

wrecked by drugs—though the drugs that wrecked my family were all
quite legal. I believe this war is a profound mistake because the collateral damage from it is so great as to make waging the war insane.
When you add together the burdens on the criminal justice system, the
desperation of generations of kids whose only real economic opportunities are as drug warriors, the queering of constitutional protections because of the constant surveillance this war requires, and, most profoundly,
the total destruction of the legal systems of many South American nations because of the power of the local drug cartels, I find it impossible
to believe that the marginal benefit in reduced drug consumption by
Americans could possibly outweigh these costs.
You may not be convinced. That’s fine. We live in a democracy, and
it is through votes that we are to choose policy. But to do that, we depend fundamentally upon the press to help inform Americans about
these issues.
Beginning in 1998, the Office of National Drug Control Policy
launched a media campaign as part of the “war on drugs.” The campaign produced scores of short film clips about issues related to illegal
drugs. In one series (the Nick and Norm series) two men are in a bar,
discussing the idea of legalizing drugs as a way to avoid some of the
collateral damage from the war. One advances an argument in favor of
drug legalization. The other responds in a powerful and effective way
against the argument of the first. In the end, the first guy changes his
mind (hey, it’s television). The plug at the end is a damning attack on
the pro-legalization campaign.
Fair enough. It’s a good ad. Not terribly misleading. It delivers its
message well. It’s a fair and reasonable message.
But let’s say you think it is a wrong message, and you’d like to run a
countercommercial. Say you want to run a series of ads that try to
demonstrate the extraordinary collateral harm that comes from the
drug war. Can you do it?
Well, obviously, these ads cost lots of money. Assume you raise the

money. Assume a group of concerned citizens donates all the money in
the world to help you get your message out. Can you be sure your message will be heard then?
No. You cannot. Television stations have a general policy of avoiding “controversial” ads. Ads sponsored by the government are deemed
uncontroversial; ads disagreeing with the government are controversial.
This selectivity might be thought inconsistent with the First Amendment, but the Supreme Court has held that stations have the right to
choose what they run. Thus, the major channels of commercial media
will refuse one side of a crucial debate the opportunity to present its case.
And the courts will defend the rights of the stations to be this biased.34
I’d be happy to defend the networks’ rights, as well—if we lived in
a media market that was truly diverse. But concentration in the media
throws that condition into doubt. If a handful of companies control access to the media, and that handful of companies gets to decide which
political positions it will allow to be promoted on its channels, then in
an obvious and important way, concentration matters. You might like
the positions the handful of companies selects. But you should not like
a world in which a mere few get to decide which issues the rest of us
get to know about.

Together

There is something innocent and obvious about the claim of the copyright warriors that the government should “protect my property.” In
the abstract, it is obviously true and, ordinarily, totally harmless. No
sane sort who is not an anarchist could disagree.
But when we see how dramatically this “property” has changed—
when we recognize how it might now interact with both technology
and markets to mean that the effective constraint on the liberty to cultivate our culture is dramatically different—the claim begins to seem

168 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:52 PM Page 169

less innocent and obvious. Given (1) the power of technology to supplement the law’s control, and (2) the power of concentrated markets
to weaken the opportunity for dissent, if strictly enforcing the massively expanded “property” rights granted by copyright fundamentally
changes the freedom within this culture to cultivate and build upon our
past, then we have to ask whether this property should be redefined.
Not starkly. Or absolutely. My point is not that we should abolish
copyright or go back to the eighteenth century. That would be a total
mistake, disastrous for the most important creative enterprises within
our culture today.
But there is a space between zero and one, Internet culture notwithstanding. And these massive shifts in the effective power of copyright
regulation, tied to increased concentration of the content industry and
resting in the hands of technology that will increasingly enable control
over the use of culture, should drive us to consider whether another adjustment is called for. Not an adjustment that increases copyright’s
power. Not an adjustment that increases its term. Rather, an adjustment to restore the balance that has traditionally defined copyright’s
regulation—a weakening of that regulation, to strengthen creativity.
Copyright law has not been a rock of Gibraltar. It’s not a set of constant commitments that, for some mysterious reason, teenagers and
geeks now flout. Instead, copyright power has grown dramatically in a
short period of time, as the technologies of distribution and creation
have changed and as lobbyists have pushed for more control by copyright holders. Changes in the past in response to changes in technology suggest that we may well need similar changes in the future. And
these changes have to be reductions in the scope of copyright, in response to the extraordinary increase in control that technology and the
market enable.
For the single point that is lost in this war on pirates is a point that
we see only after surveying the range of these changes. When you add
together the effect of changing law, concentrated markets, and chang-

ing technology, together they produce an astonishing conclusion:
Never in our history have fewer had a legal right to control more of the development of our culture than now.
Not when copyrights were perpetual, for when copyrights were
perpetual, they affected only that precise creative work. Not when only
publishers had the tools to publish, for the market then was much more
diverse. Not when there were only three television networks, for even
then, newspapers, film studios, radio stations, and publishers were independent of the networks. Never has copyright protected such a wide
range of rights, against as broad a range of actors, for a term that was
remotely as long. This form of regulation—a tiny regulation of a tiny
part of the creative energy of a nation at the founding—is now a massive regulation of the overall creative process. Law plus technology plus
the market now interact to turn this historically benign regulation into
the most significant regulation of culture that our free society has
known.35

This has been a long chapter. Its point can now be briefly stated.
At the start of this book, I distinguished between commercial and
noncommercial culture. In the course of this chapter, I have distinguished between copying a work and transforming it. We can now
combine these two distinctions and draw a clear map of the changes
that copyright law has undergone.
In 1790, the law looked like this:

The act of publishing a map, chart, and book was regulated by
copyright law. Nothing else was. Transformations were free. And as
copyright attached only with registration, and only those who intended
170 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:52 PM Page 171

to benefit commercially would register, copying through publishing of
noncommercial work was also free.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the law had changed to this:

Derivative works were now regulated by copyright law—if published, which again, given the economics of publishing at the time,
means if offered commercially. But noncommercial publishing and
transformation were still essentially free.
In 1909 the law changed to regulate copies, not publishing, and after this change, the scope of the law was tied to technology. As the
technology of copying became more prevalent, the reach of the law expanded. Thus by 1975, as photocopying machines became more common, we could say the law began to look like this:

The law was interpreted to reach noncommercial copying through,
say, copy machines, but still much of copying outside of the commercial market remained free. But the consequence of the emergence of
digital technologies, especially in the context of a digital network,
means that the law now looks like this:

commercial or not, transformative or not—with the same rules designed
to regulate commercial publishers.
Obviously, copyright law is not the enemy. The enemy is regulation
that does no good. So the question that we should be asking just now
is whether extending the regulations of copyright law into each of
these domains actually does any good.
I have no doubt that it does good in regulating commercial copying.
But I also have no doubt that it does more harm than good when
regulating (as it regulates just now) noncommercial copying and, especially, noncommercial transformation. And increasingly, for the reasons sketched especially in chapters 7 and 8, one might well wonder
whether it does more harm than good for commercial transformation.
More commercial transformative work would be created if derivative
rights were more sharply restricted.
The issue is therefore not simply whether copyright is property. Of
course copyright is a kind of “property,” and of course, as with any
property, the state ought to protect it. But first impressions notwithstanding, historically, this property right (as with all property rights36)
has been crafted to balance the important need to give authors and
artists incentives with the equally important need to assure access to
creative work. This balance has always been struck in light of new technologies. And for almost half of our tradition, the “copyright” did not
control at all the freedom of others to build upon or transform a creative
work. American culture was born free, and for almost 180 years our
country consistently protected a vibrant and rich free culture.
We achieved that free culture because our law respected important
limits on the scope of the interests protected by “property.” The very
birth of “copyright” as a statutory right recognized those limits, by
granting copyright owners protection for a limited time only (the story
of chapter 6). The tradition of “fair use” is animated by a similar concern that is increasingly under strain as the costs of exercising any fair
use right become unavoidably high (the story of chapter 7). Adding
statutory rights where markets might stifle innovation is another famil172 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_01_1-174_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:52 PM Page 173

iar limit on the property right that copyright is (chapter 8). And granting archives and libraries a broad freedom to collect, claims of property
notwithstanding, is a crucial part of guaranteeing the soul of a culture
(chapter 9). Free cultures, like free markets, are built with property. But
the nature of the property that builds a free culture is very different
from the extremist vision that dominates the debate today.
Free culture is increasingly the casualty in this war on piracy. In response to a real, if not yet quantified, threat that the technologies of the
Internet present to twentieth-century business models for producing
and distributing culture, the law and technology are being transformed
in a way that will undermine our tradition of free culture. The property
right that is copyright is no longer the balanced right that it was, or
was intended to be. The property right that is copyright has become
unbalanced, tilted toward an extreme. The opportunity to create and
transform becomes weakened in a world in which creation requires
permission and creativity must check with a lawyer.

In a well-known short story by H. G. Wells, a mountain climber
named Nunez trips (literally, down an ice slope) into an unknown and
isolated valley in the Peruvian Andes.1 The valley is extraordinarily
beautiful, with “sweet water, pasture, an even climate, slopes of rich
brown soil with tangles of a shrub that bore an excellent fruit.” But the
villagers are all blind. Nunez takes this as an opportunity. “In the
Country of the Blind,” he tells himself, “the One-Eyed Man is King.”
So he resolves to live with the villagers to explore life as a king.
Things don’t go quite as he planned. He tries to explain the idea of
sight to the villagers. They don’t understand. He tells them they are
“blind.” They don’t have the word blind. They think he’s just thick. Indeed, as they increasingly notice the things he can’t do (hear the sound
of grass being stepped on, for example), they increasingly try to control
him. He, in turn, becomes increasingly frustrated. “‘You don’t understand,’ he cried, in a voice that was meant to be great and resolute, and
which broke. ‘You are blind and I can see. Leave me alone!’”

The villagers don’t leave him alone. Nor do they see (so to speak)
the virtue of his special power. Not even the ultimate target of his affection, a young woman who to him seems “the most beautiful thing in
the whole of creation,” understands the beauty of sight. Nunez’s description of what he sees “seemed to her the most poetical of fancies,
and she listened to his description of the stars and the mountains and
her own sweet white-lit beauty as though it was a guilty indulgence.”
“She did not believe,” Wells tells us, and “she could only half understand, but she was mysteriously delighted.”
When Nunez announces his desire to marry his “mysteriously delighted” love, the father and the village object. “You see, my dear,” her
father instructs, “he’s an idiot. He has delusions. He can’t do anything
right.” They take Nunez to the village doctor.
After a careful examination, the doctor gives his opinion. “His brain
is affected,” he reports.
“What affects it?” the father asks.
“Those queer things that are called the eyes . . . are diseased . . . in
such a way as to affect his brain.”
The doctor continues: “I think I may say with reasonable certainty
that in order to cure him completely, all that we need to do is a simple
and easy surgical operation—namely, to remove these irritant bodies
[the eyes].”
“Thank Heaven for science!” says the father to the doctor. They inform Nunez of this condition necessary for him to be allowed his bride.
(You’ll have to read the original to learn what happens in the end. I believe in free culture, but never in giving away the end of a story.)

It sometimes happens that the eggs of twins fuse in the mother’s
womb. That fusion produces a “chimera.” A chimera is a single creature
with two sets of DNA. The DNA in the blood, for example, might be
different from the DNA of the skin. This possibility is an underused

178 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 179

plot for murder mysteries. “But the DNA shows with 100 percent certainty that she was not the person whose blood was at the scene. . . .”
Before I had read about chimeras, I would have said they were impossible. A single person can’t have two sets of DNA. The very idea of
DNA is that it is the code of an individual. Yet in fact, not only can two
individuals have the same set of DNA (identical twins), but one person
can have two different sets of DNA (a chimera). Our understanding of
a “person” should reflect this reality.
The more I work to understand the current struggle over copyright
and culture, which I’ve sometimes called unfairly, and sometimes not
unfairly enough, “the copyright wars,” the more I think we’re dealing
with a chimera. For example, in the battle over the question “What is
p2p file sharing?” both sides have it right, and both sides have it wrong.
One side says, “File sharing is just like two kids taping each others’
records—the sort of thing we’ve been doing for the last thirty years
without any question at all.” That’s true, at least in part. When I tell my
best friend to try out a new CD that I’ve bought, but rather than just
send the CD, I point him to my p2p server, that is, in all relevant respects, just like what every executive in every recording company no
doubt did as a kid: sharing music.
But the description is also false in part. For when my p2p server is
on a p2p network through which anyone can get access to my music,
then sure, my friends can get access, but it stretches the meaning of
“friends” beyond recognition to say “my ten thousand best friends” can
get access. Whether or not sharing my music with my best friend is
what “we have always been allowed to do,” we have not always been allowed to share music with “our ten thousand best friends.”
Likewise, when the other side says, “File sharing is just like walking
into a Tower Records and taking a CD off the shelf and walking out
with it,” that’s true, at least in part. If, after Lyle Lovett (finally) releases a new album, rather than buying it, I go to Kazaa and find a free
copy to take, that is very much like stealing a copy from Tower.

But it is not quite stealing from Tower. After all, when I take a CD
from Tower Records, Tower has one less CD to sell. And when I take
a CD from Tower Records, I get a bit of plastic and a cover, and something to show on my shelves. (And, while we’re at it, we could also note
that when I take a CD from Tower Records, the maximum fine that
might be imposed on me, under California law, at least, is $1,000. According to the RIAA, by contrast, if I download a ten-song CD, I’m liable for $1,500,000 in damages.)
The point is not that it is as neither side describes. The point is that
it is both—both as the RIAA describes it and as Kazaa describes it. It
is a chimera. And rather than simply denying what the other side asserts, we need to begin to think about how we should respond to this
chimera. What rules should govern it?
We could respond by simply pretending that it is not a chimera. We
could, with the RIAA, decide that every act of file sharing should be a
felony. We could prosecute families for millions of dollars in damages
just because file sharing occurred on a family computer. And we can get
universities to monitor all computer traffic to make sure that no computer is used to commit this crime. These responses might be extreme,
but each of them has either been proposed or actually implemented.2
Alternatively, we could respond to file sharing the way many kids
act as though we’ve responded. We could totally legalize it. Let there
be no copyright liability, either civil or criminal, for making copyrighted content available on the Net. Make file sharing like gossip: regulated, if at all, by social norms but not by law.
Either response is possible. I think either would be a mistake.
Rather than embrace one of these two extremes, we should embrace
something that recognizes the truth in both. And while I end this book
with a sketch of a system that does just that, my aim in the next chapter
is to show just how awful it would be for us to adopt the zero-tolerance
extreme. I believe either extreme would be worse than a reasonable alternative. But I believe the zero-tolerance solution would be the worse
of the two extremes.
180 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 181

Yet zero tolerance is increasingly our government’s policy. In the
middle of the chaos that the Internet has created, an extraordinary land
grab is occurring. The law and technology are being shifted to give content holders a kind of control over our culture that they have never had
before. And in this extremism, many an opportunity for new innovation and new creativity will be lost.
I’m not talking about the opportunities for kids to “steal” music. My
focus instead is the commercial and cultural innovation that this war
will also kill. We have never seen the power to innovate spread so
broadly among our citizens, and we have just begun to see the innovation that this power will unleash. Yet the Internet has already seen the
passing of one cycle of innovation around technologies to distribute
content. The law is responsible for this passing. As the vice president
for global public policy at one of these new innovators, eMusic.com,
put it when criticizing the DMCA’s added protection for copyrighted
material,
eMusic opposes music piracy. We are a distributor of copyrighted
material, and we want to protect those rights.
But building a technology fortress that locks in the clout of
the major labels is by no means the only way to protect copyright
interests, nor is it necessarily the best. It is simply too early to answer that question. Market forces operating naturally may very
well produce a totally different industry model.
This is a critical point. The choices that industry sectors make
with respect to these systems will in many ways directly shape the
market for digital media and the manner in which digital media
are distributed. This in turn will directly influence the options
that are available to consumers, both in terms of the ease with
which they will be able to access digital media and the equipment
that they will require to do so. Poor choices made this early in the
game will retard the growth of this market, hurting everyone’s
interests.3
PUZZLES 181

In April 2001, eMusic.com was purchased by Vivendi Universal,
one of â&#x20AC;&#x153;the major labels.â&#x20AC;? Its position on these matters has now
changed.
Reversing our tradition of tolerance now will not merely quash
piracy. It will sacrifice values that are important to this culture, and will
kill opportunities that could be extraordinarily valuable.

182 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 183

CHAPTER TWELVE:

Harms

To fight “piracy,” to protect “property,” the content industry has
launched a war. Lobbying and lots of campaign contributions have
now brought the government into this war. As with any war, this one
will have both direct and collateral damage. As with any war of prohibition, these damages will be suffered most by our own people.
My aim so far has been to describe the consequences of this war, in
particular, the consequences for “free culture.” But my aim now is to extend this description of consequences into an argument. Is this war justified?
In my view, it is not. There is no good reason why this time, for the
first time, the law should defend the old against the new, just when the
power of the property called “intellectual property” is at its greatest in
our history.
Yet “common sense” does not see it this way. Common sense is still
on the side of the Causbys and the content industry. The extreme
claims of control in the name of property still resonate; the uncritical
rejection of “piracy” still has play.
183

There will be many consequences of continuing this war. I want to
describe just three. All three might be said to be unintended. I am quite
confident the third is unintended. I’m less sure about the first two. The
first two protect modern RCAs, but there is no Howard Armstrong in
the wings to fight today’s monopolists of culture.

Constraining Creators

In the next ten years we will see an explosion of digital technologies.
These technologies will enable almost anyone to capture and share
content. Capturing and sharing content, of course, is what humans have
done since the dawn of man. It is how we learn and communicate. But
capturing and sharing through digital technology is different. The fidelity and power are different. You could send an e-mail telling someone about a joke you saw on Comedy Central, or you could send the
clip. You could write an essay about the inconsistencies in the arguments of the politician you most love to hate, or you could make a short
film that puts statement against statement. You could write a poem to
express your love, or you could weave together a string—a mash-up—
of songs from your favorite artists in a collage and make it available on
the Net.
This digital “capturing and sharing” is in part an extension of the
capturing and sharing that has always been integral to our culture, and
in part it is something new. It is continuous with the Kodak, but it explodes the boundaries of Kodak-like technologies. The technology of
digital “capturing and sharing” promises a world of extraordinarily diverse creativity that can be easily and broadly shared. And as that creativity is applied to democracy, it will enable a broad range of citizens
to use technology to express and criticize and contribute to the culture
all around.
Technology has thus given us an opportunity to do something with
culture that has only ever been possible for individuals in small groups,
184 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 185

isolated from others. Think about an old man telling a story to a collection of neighbors in a small town. Now imagine that same storytelling extended across the globe.
Yet all this is possible only if the activity is presumptively legal. In
the current regime of legal regulation, it is not. Forget file sharing for
a moment. Think about your favorite amazing sites on the Net. Web
sites that offer plot summaries from forgotten television shows; sites
that catalog cartoons from the 1960s; sites that mix images and sound
to criticize politicians or businesses; sites that gather newspaper articles
on remote topics of science or culture. There is a vast amount of creative
work spread across the Internet. But as the law is currently crafted, this
work is presumptively illegal.
That presumption will increasingly chill creativity, as the examples
of extreme penalties for vague infringements continue to proliferate. It
is impossible to get a clear sense of what’s allowed and what’s not, and at
the same time, the penalties for crossing the line are astonishingly harsh.
The four students who were threatened by the RIAA ( Jesse Jordan of
chapter 3 was just one) were threatened with a $98 billion lawsuit for
building search engines that permitted songs to be copied. Yet WorldCom—which defrauded investors of $11 billion, resulting in a loss to investors in market capitalization of over $200 billion—received a fine of a
mere $750 million.1 And under legislation being pushed in Congress
right now, a doctor who negligently removes the wrong leg in an operation would be liable for no more than $250,000 in damages for pain and
suffering.2 Can common sense recognize the absurdity in a world where
the maximum fine for downloading two songs off the Internet is more
than the fine for a doctor’s negligently butchering a patient?
The consequence of this legal uncertainty, tied to these extremely
high penalties, is that an extraordinary amount of creativity will either
never be exercised, or never be exercised in the open. We drive this creative process underground by branding the modern-day Walt Disneys
“pirates.” We make it impossible for businesses to rely upon a public
domain, because the boundaries of the public domain are designed to
PUZZLES 185

be unclear. It never pays to do anything except pay for the right to create, and hence only those who can pay are allowed to create. As was the
case in the Soviet Union, though for very different reasons, we will begin to see a world of underground art—not because the message is necessarily political, or because the subject is controversial, but because the
very act of creating the art is legally fraught. Already, exhibits of “illegal art” tour the United States.3 In what does their “illegality” consist?
In the act of mixing the culture around us with an expression that is
critical or reflective.
Part of the reason for this fear of illegality has to do with the changing law. I described that change in detail in chapter 10. But an even
bigger part has to do with the increasing ease with which infractions
can be tracked. As users of file-sharing systems discovered in 2002, it
is a trivial matter for copyright owners to get courts to order Internet
service providers to reveal who has what content. It is as if your cassette
tape player transmitted a list of the songs that you played in the privacy
of your own home that anyone could tune into for whatever reason
they chose.
Never in our history has a painter had to worry about whether
his painting infringed on someone else’s work; but the modern-day
painter, using the tools of Photoshop, sharing content on the Web,
must worry all the time. Images are all around, but the only safe images
to use in the act of creation are those purchased from Corbis or another
image farm. And in purchasing, censoring happens. There is a free
market in pencils; we needn’t worry about its effect on creativity. But
there is a highly regulated, monopolized market in cultural icons; the
right to cultivate and transform them is not similarly free.
Lawyers rarely see this because lawyers are rarely empirical. As I
described in chapter 7, in response to the story about documentary
filmmaker Jon Else, I have been lectured again and again by lawyers
who insist Else’s use was fair use, and hence I am wrong to say that the
law regulates such a use.

186 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 187

But fair use in America simply means the right to hire a lawyer to
defend your right to create. And as lawyers love to forget, our system
for defending rights such as fair use is astonishingly bad—in practically
every context, but especially here. It costs too much, it delivers too
slowly, and what it delivers often has little connection to the justice underlying the claim. The legal system may be tolerable for the very rich.
For everyone else, it is an embarrassment to a tradition that prides itself on the rule of law.
Judges and lawyers can tell themselves that fair use provides adequate “breathing room” between regulation by the law and the access
the law should allow. But it is a measure of how out of touch our legal
system has become that anyone actually believes this. The rules that
publishers impose upon writers, the rules that film distributors impose
upon filmmakers, the rules that newspapers impose upon journalists—
these are the real laws governing creativity. And these rules have little
relationship to the “law” with which judges comfort themselves.
For in a world that threatens $150,000 for a single willful infringement of a copyright, and which demands tens of thousands of dollars to
even defend against a copyright infringement claim, and which would
never return to the wrongfully accused defendant anything of the costs
she suffered to defend her right to speak—in that world, the astonishingly broad regulations that pass under the name “copyright” silence
speech and creativity. And in that world, it takes a studied blindness for
people to continue to believe they live in a culture that is free.
As Jed Horovitz, the businessman behind Video Pipeline, said
to me,
We’re losing [creative] opportunities right and left. Creative
people are being forced not to express themselves. Thoughts are
not being expressed. And while a lot of stuff may [still] be created,
it still won’t get distributed. Even if the stuff gets made . . . you’re
not going to get it distributed in the mainstream media unless

you’ve got a little note from a lawyer saying, “This has been
cleared.” You’re not even going to get it on PBS without that kind
of permission. That’s the point at which they control it.

Constraining Innovators

The story of the last section was a crunchy-lefty story—creativity
quashed, artists who can’t speak, yada yada yada. Maybe that doesn’t
get you going. Maybe you think there’s enough weird art out there, and
enough expression that is critical of what seems to be just about everything. And if you think that, you might think there’s little in this story
to worry you.
But there’s an aspect of this story that is not lefty in any sense. Indeed, it is an aspect that could be written by the most extreme promarket ideologue. And if you’re one of these sorts (and a special one at
that, 188 pages into a book like this), then you can see this other aspect
by substituting “free market” every place I’ve spoken of “free culture.”
The point is the same, even if the interests affecting culture are more
fundamental.
The charge I’ve been making about the regulation of culture is the
same charge free marketers make about regulating markets. Everyone,
of course, concedes that some regulation of markets is necessary—at a
minimum, we need rules of property and contract, and courts to enforce both. Likewise, in this culture debate, everyone concedes that at
least some framework of copyright is also required. But both perspectives vehemently insist that just because some regulation is good, it
doesn’t follow that more regulation is better. And both perspectives are
constantly attuned to the ways in which regulation simply enables the
powerful industries of today to protect themselves against the competitors of tomorrow.
This is the single most dramatic effect of the shift in regulatory
strategy that I described in chapter 10. The consequence of this mas188 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 189

sive threat of liability tied to the murky boundaries of copyright law is
that innovators who want to innovate in this space can safely innovate
only if they have the sign-off from last generation’s dominant industries. That lesson has been taught through a series of cases that were
designed and executed to teach venture capitalists a lesson. That lesson—what former Napster CEO Hank Barry calls a “nuclear pall” that
has fallen over the Valley—has been learned.
Consider one example to make the point, a story whose beginning
I told in The Future of Ideas and which has progressed in a way that
even I (pessimist extraordinaire) would never have predicted.
In 1997, Michael Roberts launched a company called MP3.com.
MP3.com was keen to remake the music business. Their goal was not
just to facilitate new ways to get access to content. Their goal was also
to facilitate new ways to create content. Unlike the major labels,
MP3.com offered creators a venue to distribute their creativity, without demanding an exclusive engagement from the creators.
To make this system work, however, MP3.com needed a reliable
way to recommend music to its users. The idea behind this alternative
was to leverage the revealed preferences of music listeners to recommend new artists. If you like Lyle Lovett, you’re likely to enjoy Bonnie
Raitt. And so on.
This idea required a simple way to gather data about user preferences. MP3.com came up with an extraordinarily clever way to gather
this preference data. In January 2000, the company launched a service
called my.mp3.com. Using software provided by MP3.com, a user would
sign into an account and then insert into her computer a CD. The software would identify the CD, and then give the user access to that content. So, for example, if you inserted a CD by Jill Sobule, then
wherever you were—at work or at home—you could get access to that
music once you signed into your account. The system was therefore a
kind of music-lockbox.
No doubt some could use this system to illegally copy content. But
that opportunity existed with or without MP3.com. The aim of the
PUZZLES 189

my.mp3.com service was to give users access to their own content, and
as a by-product, by seeing the content they already owned, to discover
the kind of content the users liked.
To make this system function, however, MP3.com needed to copy
50,000 CDs to a server. (In principle, it could have been the user who
uploaded the music, but that would have taken a great deal of time, and
would have produced a product of questionable quality.) It therefore
purchased 50,000 CDs from a store, and started the process of making
copies of those CDs. Again, it would not serve the content from those
copies to anyone except those who authenticated that they had a copy
of the CD they wanted to access. So while this was 50,000 copies, it
was 50,000 copies directed at giving customers something they had already bought.
Nine days after MP3.com launched its service, the five major labels,
headed by the RIAA, brought a lawsuit against MP3.com. MP3.com
settled with four of the five. Nine months later, a federal judge found
MP3.com to have been guilty of willful infringement with respect to
the fifth. Applying the law as it is, the judge imposed a fine against
MP3.com of $118 million. MP3.com then settled with the remaining
plaintiff, Vivendi Universal, paying over $54 million. Vivendi purchased MP3.com just about a year later.
That part of the story I have told before. Now consider its conclusion.
After Vivendi purchased MP3.com, Vivendi turned around and
filed a malpractice lawsuit against the lawyers who had advised it that
they had a good faith claim that the service they wanted to offer would
be considered legal under copyright law. This lawsuit alleged that it
should have been obvious that the courts would find this behavior illegal; therefore, this lawsuit sought to punish any lawyer who had dared
to suggest that the law was less restrictive than the labels demanded.
The clear purpose of this lawsuit (which was settled for an unspecified amount shortly after the story was no longer covered in the press)
was to send an unequivocal message to lawyers advising clients in this
space: It is not just your clients who might suffer if the content indus190 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 191

try directs its guns against them. It is also you. So those of you who believe the law should be less restrictive should realize that such a view of
the law will cost you and your firm dearly.
This strategy is not just limited to the lawyers. In April 2003,
Universal and EMI brought a lawsuit against Hummer Winblad, the
venture capital firm (VC) that had funded Napster at a certain stage of
its development, its cofounder ( John Hummer), and general partner
(Hank Barry).4 The claim here, as well, was that the VC should have
recognized the right of the content industry to control how the industry should develop. They should be held personally liable for funding a
company whose business turned out to be beyond the law. Here again,
the aim of the lawsuit is transparent: Any VC now recognizes that if
you fund a company whose business is not approved of by the dinosaurs,
you are at risk not just in the marketplace, but in the courtroom as well.
Your investment buys you not only a company, it also buys you a lawsuit.
So extreme has the environment become that even car manufacturers
are afraid of technologies that touch content. In an article in Business
2.0, Rafe Needleman describes a discussion with BMW:
I asked why, with all the storage capacity and computer power in
the car, there was no way to play MP3 files. I was told that BMW
engineers in Germany had rigged a new vehicle to play MP3s via
the car’s built-in sound system, but that the company’s marketing
and legal departments weren’t comfortable with pushing this forward for release stateside. Even today, no new cars are sold in the
United States with bona fide MP3 players. . . . 5

This is the world of the mafia—filled with “your money or your
life” offers, governed in the end not by courts but by the threats that the
law empowers copyright holders to exercise. It is a system that will obviously and necessarily stifle new innovation. It is hard enough to start
a company. It is impossibly hard if that company is constantly threatened by litigation.
PUZZLES 191

The point is not that businesses should have a right to start illegal
enterprises. The point is the definition of “illegal.” The law is a mess of
uncertainty. We have no good way to know how it should apply to new
technologies. Yet by reversing our tradition of judicial deference, and
by embracing the astonishingly high penalties that copyright law imposes, that uncertainty now yields a reality which is far more conservative than is right. If the law imposed the death penalty for parking
tickets, we’d not only have fewer parking tickets, we’d also have much
less driving. The same principle applies to innovation. If innovation is
constantly checked by this uncertain and unlimited liability, we will
have much less vibrant innovation and much less creativity.
The point is directly parallel to the crunchy-lefty point about fair
use. Whatever the “real” law is, realism about the effect of law in both
contexts is the same. This wildly punitive system of regulation will systematically stifle creativity and innovation. It will protect some industries and some creators, but it will harm industry and creativity
generally. Free market and free culture depend upon vibrant competition. Yet the effect of the law today is to stifle just this kind of competition. The effect is to produce an overregulated culture, just as the effect
of too much control in the market is to produce an overregulatedregulated market.
The building of a permission culture, rather than a free culture, is
the first important way in which the changes I have described will burden innovation. A permission culture means a lawyer’s culture—a culture in which the ability to create requires a call to your lawyer. Again,
I am not antilawyer, at least when they’re kept in their proper place. I
am certainly not antilaw. But our profession has lost the sense of its
limits. And leaders in our profession have lost an appreciation of the
high costs that our profession imposes upon others. The inefficiency of
the law is an embarrassment to our tradition. And while I believe our
profession should therefore do everything it can to make the law more
efficient, it should at least do everything it can to limit the reach of the

192 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 193

law where the law is not doing any good. The transaction costs buried
within a permission culture are enough to bury a wide range of creativity. Someone needs to do a lot of justifying to justify that result.

The uncertainty of the law is one burden on innovation. There is
a second burden that operates more directly. This is the effort by many
in the content industry to use the law to directly regulate the technology of the Internet so that it better protects their content.
The motivation for this response is obvious. The Internet enables
the efficient spread of content. That efficiency is a feature of the Internet’s design. But from the perspective of the content industry, this feature is a “bug.” The efficient spread of content means that content
distributors have a harder time controlling the distribution of content.
One obvious response to this efficiency is thus to make the Internet
less efficient. If the Internet enables “piracy,” then, this response says,
we should break the kneecaps of the Internet.
The examples of this form of legislation are many. At the urging of
the content industry, some in Congress have threatened legislation that
would require computers to determine whether the content they access
is protected or not, and to disable the spread of protected content.6 Congress has already launched proceedings to explore a mandatory “broadcast flag” that would be required on any device capable of transmitting
digital video (i.e., a computer), and that would disable the copying of
any content that is marked with a broadcast flag. Other members of
Congress have proposed immunizing content providers from liability
for technology they might deploy that would hunt down copyright violators and disable their machines.7
In one sense, these solutions seem sensible. If the problem is the
code, why not regulate the code to remove the problem. But any regulation of technical infrastructure will always be tuned to the particular
technology of the day. It will impose significant burdens and costs on

the technology, but will likely be eclipsed by advances around exactly
those requirements.
In March 2002, a broad coalition of technology companies, led by
Intel, tried to get Congress to see the harm that such legislation would
impose.8 Their argument was obviously not that copyright should not
be protected. Instead, they argued, any protection should not do more
harm than good.

There is one more obvious way in which this war has harmed innovationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;again, a story that will be quite familiar to the free market
crowd.
Copyright may be property, but like all property, it is also a form
of regulation. It is a regulation that benefits some and harms others.
When done right, it benefits creators and harms leeches. When done
wrong, it is regulation the powerful use to defeat competitors.
As I described in chapter 10, despite this feature of copyright as
regulation, and subject to important qualifications outlined by Jessica
Litman in her book Digital Copyright,9 overall this history of copyright
is not bad. As chapter 10 details, when new technologies have come
along, Congress has struck a balance to assure that the new is protected
from the old. Compulsory, or statutory, licenses have been one part of
that strategy. Free use (as in the case of the VCR) has been another.
But that pattern of deference to new technologies has now changed
with the rise of the Internet. Rather than striking a balance between
the claims of a new technology and the legitimate rights of content
creators, both the courts and Congress have imposed legal restrictions
that will have the effect of smothering the new to benefit the old.
The response by the courts has been fairly universal.10 It has been
mirrored in the responses threatened and actually implemented by
Congress. I wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t catalog all of those responses here.11 But there is one
example that captures the flavor of them all. This is the story of the demise of Internet radio.
194 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 195

As I described in chapter 4, when a radio station plays a song, the
recording artist doesn’t get paid for that “radio performance” unless he
or she is also the composer. So, for example if Marilyn Monroe had
recorded a version of “Happy Birthday”—to memorialize her famous
performance before President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden—
then whenever that recording was played on the radio, the current copyright owners of “Happy Birthday” would get some money, whereas
Marilyn Monroe would not.
The reasoning behind this balance struck by Congress makes some
sense. The justification was that radio was a kind of advertising. The
recording artist thus benefited because by playing her music, the radio
station was making it more likely that her records would be purchased.
Thus, the recording artist got something, even if only indirectly. Probably this reasoning had less to do with the result than with the power
of radio stations: Their lobbyists were quite good at stopping any efforts to get Congress to require compensation to the recording artists.
Enter Internet radio. Like regular radio, Internet radio is a technology to stream content from a broadcaster to a listener. The broadcast
travels across the Internet, not across the ether of radio spectrum.
Thus, I can “tune in” to an Internet radio station in Berlin while sitting
in San Francisco, even though there’s no way for me to tune in to a regular radio station much beyond the San Francisco metropolitan area.
This feature of the architecture of Internet radio means that there
are potentially an unlimited number of radio stations that a user could
tune in to using her computer, whereas under the existing architecture
for broadcast radio, there is an obvious limit to the number of broadcasters and clear broadcast frequencies. Internet radio could therefore
be more competitive than regular radio; it could provide a wider range
of selections. And because the potential audience for Internet radio is
the whole world, niche stations could easily develop and market their
content to a relatively large number of users worldwide. According to
some estimates, more than eighty million users worldwide have tuned
in to this new form of radio.
PUZZLES 195

Internet radio is thus to radio what FM was to AM. It is an improvement potentially vastly more significant than the FM improvement over AM, since not only is the technology better, so, too, is the
competition. Indeed, there is a direct parallel between the fight to establish FM radio and the fight to protect Internet radio. As one author
describes Howard Armstrong’s struggle to enable FM radio,
An almost unlimited number of FM stations was possible in the
shortwaves, thus ending the unnatural restrictions imposed on radio in the crowded longwaves. If FM were freely developed, the
number of stations would be limited only by economics and competition rather than by technical restrictions. . . . Armstrong
likened the situation that had grown up in radio to that following
the invention of the printing press, when governments and ruling
interests attempted to control this new instrument of mass communications by imposing restrictive licenses on it. This tyranny
was broken only when it became possible for men freely to acquire printing presses and freely to run them. FM in this sense
was as great an invention as the printing presses, for it gave radio
the opportunity to strike off its shackles.12

This potential for FM radio was never realized—not because Armstrong was wrong about the technology, but because he underestimated
the power of “vested interests, habits, customs and legislation”13 to retard the growth of this competing technology.
Now the very same claim could be made about Internet radio. For
again, there is no technical limitation that could restrict the number of
Internet radio stations. The only restrictions on Internet radio are
those imposed by the law. Copyright law is one such law. So the first
question we should ask is, what copyright rules would govern Internet
radio?
But here the power of the lobbyists is reversed. Internet radio is a
new industry. The recording artists, on the other hand, have a very
196 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 197

powerful lobby, the RIAA. Thus when Congress considered the phenomenon of Internet radio in 1995, the lobbyists had primed Congress
to adopt a different rule for Internet radio than the rule that applies to
terrestrial radio. While terrestrial radio does not have to pay our hypothetical Marilyn Monroe when it plays her hypothetical recording of
â&#x20AC;&#x153;Happy Birthdayâ&#x20AC;? on the air, Internet radio does. Not only is the law not
neutral toward Internet radioâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the law actually burdens Internet radio
more than it burdens terrestrial radio.
This financial burden is not slight. As Harvard law professor
William Fisher estimates, if an Internet radio station distributed adfree popular music to (on average) ten thousand listeners, twenty-four
hours a day, the total artist fees that radio station would owe would be
over $1 million a year.14 A regular radio station broadcasting the same
content would pay no equivalent fee.
The burden is not financial only. Under the original rules that were
proposed, an Internet radio station (but not a terrestrial radio station)
would have to collect the following data from every listening transaction:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

12.

name of the service;
channel of the program (AM/FM stations use station ID);
type of program (archived/looped/live);
date of transmission;
time of transmission;
time zone of origination of transmission;
numeric designation of the place of the sound recording
within the program;
duration of transmission (to nearest second);
sound recording title;
ISRC code of the recording;
release year of the album per copyright notice and in the case
of compilation albums, the release year of the album and copyright date of the track;
featured recording artist;
PUZZLES 197

retail album title;
recording label;
UPC code of the retail album;
catalog number;
copyright owner information;
musical genre of the channel or program (station format);
name of the service or entity;
channel or program;
date and time that the user logged in (in the userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time zone);
date and time that the user logged out (in the userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time zone);
time zone where the signal was received (user);
Unique User identifier;
the country in which the user received the transmissions.

The Librarian of Congress eventually suspended these reporting
requirements, pending further study. And he also changed the original
rates set by the arbitration panel charged with setting rates. But the
basic difference between Internet radio and terrestrial radio remains:
Internet radio has to pay a type of copyright fee that terrestrial radio
does not.
Why? What justifies this difference? Was there any study of the
economic consequences from Internet radio that would justify these
differences? Was the motive to protect artists against piracy?
In a rare bit of candor, one RIAA expert admitted what seemed obvious to everyone at the time. As Alex Alben, vice president for Public
Policy at Real Networks, told me,
The RIAA, which was representing the record labels, presented
some testimony about what they thought a willing buyer would
pay to a willing seller, and it was much higher. It was ten times
higher than what radio stations pay to perform the same songs for
the same period of time. And so the attorneys representing the
webcasters asked the RIAA, . . . â&#x20AC;&#x153;How do you come up with a
198 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 199

rate that’s so much higher? Why is it worth more than radio? Because here we have hundreds of thousands of webcasters who
want to pay, and that should establish the market rate, and if you
set the rate so high, you’re going to drive the small webcasters out
of business. . . .”
And the RIAA experts said, “Well, we don’t really model this
as an industry with thousands of webcasters, we think it should be
an industry with, you know, five or seven big players who can pay a
high rate and it’s a stable, predictable market.” (Emphasis added.)

Translation: The aim is to use the law to eliminate competition, so
that this platform of potentially immense competition, which would
cause the diversity and range of content available to explode, would not
cause pain to the dinosaurs of old. There is no one, on either the right
or the left, who should endorse this use of the law. And yet there is
practically no one, on either the right or the left, who is doing anything
effective to prevent it.

Corrupting Citizens

Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity
for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables.
In addition to these important harms, there is one more that was
important to our forebears, but seems forgotten today. Overregulation
corrupts citizens and weakens the rule of law.
The war that is being waged today is a war of prohibition. As with
every war of prohibition, it is targeted against the behavior of a very
large number of citizens. According to The New York Times, 43 million
Americans downloaded music in May 2002.15 According to the RIAA,
the behavior of those 43 million Americans is a felony. We thus have a
set of rules that transform 20 percent of America into criminals. As the
PUZZLES 199

RIAA launches lawsuits against not only the Napsters and Kazaas of
the world, but against students building search engines, and increasingly against ordinary users downloading content, the technologies for
sharing will advance to further protect and hide illegal use. It is an arms
race or a civil war, with the extremes of one side inviting a more extreme response by the other.
The content industry’s tactics exploit the failings of the American
legal system. When the RIAA brought suit against Jesse Jordan, it
knew that in Jordan it had found a scapegoat, not a defendant. The
threat of having to pay either all the money in the world in damages
($15,000,000) or almost all the money in the world to defend against
paying all the money in the world in damages ($250,000 in legal fees)
led Jordan to choose to pay all the money he had in the world
($12,000) to make the suit go away. The same strategy animates the
RIAA’s suits against individual users. In September 2003, the RIAA
sued 261 individuals—including a twelve-year-old girl living in public
housing and a seventy-year-old man who had no idea what file sharing
was.16 As these scapegoats discovered, it will always cost more to defend against these suits than it would cost to simply settle. (The twelve
year old, for example, like Jesse Jordan, paid her life savings of $2,000
to settle the case.) Our law is an awful system for defending rights. It
is an embarrassment to our tradition. And the consequence of our law
as it is, is that those with the power can use the law to quash any rights
they oppose.
Wars of prohibition are nothing new in America. This one is just
something more extreme than anything we’ve seen before. We experimented with alcohol prohibition, at a time when the per capita consumption of alcohol was 1.5 gallons per capita per year. The war against
drinking initially reduced that consumption to just 30 percent of its
preprohibition levels, but by the end of prohibition, consumption was
up to 70 percent of the preprohibition level. Americans were drinking
just about as much, but now, a vast number were criminals.17 We have

200 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 201

launched a war on drugs aimed at reducing the consumption of regulated narcotics that 7 percent (or 16 million) Americans now use.18
That is a drop from the high (so to speak) in 1979 of 14 percent of the
population. We regulate automobiles to the point where the vast majority of Americans violate the law every day. We run such a complex
tax system that a majority of cash businesses regularly cheat.19 We
pride ourselves on our “free society,” but an endless array of ordinary
behavior is regulated within our society. And as a result, a huge proportion of Americans regularly violate at least some law.
This state of affairs is not without consequence. It is a particularly
salient issue for teachers like me, whose job it is to teach law students
about the importance of “ethics.” As my colleague Charlie Nesson told
a class at Stanford, each year law schools admit thousands of students
who have illegally downloaded music, illegally consumed alcohol and
sometimes drugs, illegally worked without paying taxes, illegally driven
cars. These are kids for whom behaving illegally is increasingly the
norm. And then we, as law professors, are supposed to teach them how
to behave ethically—how to say no to bribes, or keep client funds separate, or honor a demand to disclose a document that will mean that
your case is over. Generations of Americans—more significantly in
some parts of America than in others, but still, everywhere in America
today—can’t live their lives both normally and legally, since “normally”
entails a certain degree of illegality.
The response to this general illegality is either to enforce the law
more severely or to change the law. We, as a society, have to learn how
to make that choice more rationally. Whether a law makes sense depends, in part, at least, upon whether the costs of the law, both intended and collateral, outweigh the benefits. If the costs, intended and
collateral, do outweigh the benefits, then the law ought to be changed.
Alternatively, if the costs of the existing system are much greater than
the costs of an alternative, then we have a good reason to consider the
alternative.

My point is not the idiotic one: Just because people violate a law, we
should therefore repeal it. Obviously, we could reduce murder statistics
dramatically by legalizing murder on Wednesdays and Fridays. But
that wouldn’t make any sense, since murder is wrong every day of the
week. A society is right to ban murder always and everywhere.
My point is instead one that democracies understood for generations, but that we recently have learned to forget. The rule of law
depends upon people obeying the law. The more often, and more repeatedly, we as citizens experience violating the law, the less we respect
the law. Obviously, in most cases, the important issue is the law, not
respect for the law. I don’t care whether the rapist respects the law or
not; I want to catch and incarcerate the rapist. But I do care whether
my students respect the law. And I do care if the rules of law sow increasing disrespect because of the extreme of regulation they impose.
Twenty million Americans have come of age since the Internet introduced this different idea of “sharing.” We need to be able to call these
twenty million Americans “citizens,” not “felons.”
When at least forty-three million citizens download content from
the Internet, and when they use tools to combine that content in ways
unauthorized by copyright holders, the first question we should be asking is not how best to involve the FBI. The first question should be
whether this particular prohibition is really necessary in order to achieve
the proper ends that copyright law serves. Is there another way to
assure that artists get paid without transforming forty-three million
Americans into felons? Does it make sense if there are other ways to
assure that artists get paid without transforming America into a nation
of felons?
This abstract point can be made more clear with a particular example.
We all own CDs. Many of us still own phonograph records. These
pieces of plastic encode music that in a certain sense we have bought.
The law protects our right to buy and sell that plastic: It is not a copyright infringement for me to sell all my classical records at a used

202 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 203

record store and buy jazz records to replace them. That “use” of the
recordings is free.
But as the MP3 craze has demonstrated, there is another use of
phonograph records that is effectively free. Because these recordings
were made without copy-protection technologies, I am “free” to copy,
or “rip,” music from my records onto a computer hard disk. Indeed,
Apple Corporation went so far as to suggest that “freedom” was a right:
In a series of commercials, Apple endorsed the “Rip, Mix, Burn” capacities of digital technologies.
This “use” of my records is certainly valuable. I have begun a large
process at home of ripping all of my and my wife’s CDs, and storing
them in one archive. Then, using Apple’s iTunes, or a wonderful program called Andromeda, we can build different play lists of our music:
Bach, Baroque, Love Songs, Love Songs of Significant Others—the
potential is endless. And by reducing the costs of mixing play lists,
these technologies help build a creativity with play lists that is itself independently valuable. Compilations of songs are creative and meaningful in their own right.
This use is enabled by unprotected media—either CDs or records.
But unprotected media also enable file sharing. File sharing threatens
(or so the content industry believes) the ability of creators to earn a fair
return from their creativity. And thus, many are beginning to experiment with technologies to eliminate unprotected media. These technologies, for example, would enable CDs that could not be ripped. Or
they might enable spy programs to identify ripped content on people’s
machines.
If these technologies took off, then the building of large archives of
your own music would become quite difficult. You might hang in
hacker circles, and get technology to disable the technologies that protect the content. Trading in those technologies is illegal, but maybe that
doesn’t bother you much. In any case, for the vast majority of people,
these protection technologies would effectively destroy the archiving

use of CDs. The technology, in other words, would force us all back to
the world where we either listened to music by manipulating pieces of
plastic or were part of a massively complex “digital rights management” system.
If the only way to assure that artists get paid were the elimination
of the ability to freely move content, then these technologies to interfere with the freedom to move content would be justifiable. But what
if there were another way to assure that artists are paid, without locking down any content? What if, in other words, a different system
could assure compensation to artists while also preserving the freedom
to move content easily?
My point just now is not to prove that there is such a system. I offer a version of such a system in the last chapter of this book. For now,
the only point is the relatively uncontroversial one: If a different system
achieved the same legitimate objectives that the existing copyright system achieved, but left consumers and creators much more free, then
we’d have a very good reason to pursue this alternative—namely, freedom. The choice, in other words, would not be between property and
piracy; the choice would be between different property systems and the
freedoms each allowed.
I believe there is a way to assure that artists are paid without turning forty-three million Americans into felons. But the salient feature
of this alternative is that it would lead to a very different market for
producing and distributing creativity. The dominant few, who today
control the vast majority of the distribution of content in the world,
would no longer exercise this extreme of control. Rather, they would go
the way of the horse-drawn buggy.
Except that this generation’s buggy manufacturers have already
saddled Congress, and are riding the law to protect themselves against
this new form of competition. For them the choice is between fortythree million Americans as criminals and their own survival.
It is understandable why they choose as they do. It is not understandable why we as a democracy continue to choose as we do. Jack
204 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 205

Valenti is charming; but not so charming as to justify giving up a tradition as deep and important as our tradition of free culture.

There’s one more aspect to this corruption that is particularly important to civil liberties, and follows directly from any war of prohibition. As Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Fred von Lohmann
describes, this is the “collateral damage” that “arises whenever you turn
a very large percentage of the population into criminals.” This is the
collateral damage to civil liberties generally.
“If you can treat someone as a putative lawbreaker,” von Lohmann
explains,
then all of a sudden a lot of basic civil liberty protections evaporate to one degree or another. . . . If you’re a copyright infringer,
how can you hope to have any privacy rights? If you’re a copyright
infringer, how can you hope to be secure against seizures of your
computer? How can you hope to continue to receive Internet
access? . . . Our sensibilities change as soon as we think, “Oh,
well, but that person’s a criminal, a lawbreaker.” Well, what this
campaign against file sharing has done is turn a remarkable percentage of the American Internet-using population into “lawbreakers.”

And the consequence of this transformation of the American public
into criminals is that it becomes trivial, as a matter of due process, to
effectively erase much of the privacy most would presume.
Users of the Internet began to see this generally in 2003 as the
RIAA launched its campaign to force Internet service providers to turn
over the names of customers who the RIAA believed were violating
copyright law. Verizon fought that demand and lost. With a simple request to a judge, and without any notice to the customer at all, the
identity of an Internet user is revealed.
PUZZLES 205

The RIAA then expanded this campaign, by announcing a general
strategy to sue individual users of the Internet who are alleged to have
downloaded copyrighted music from file-sharing systems. But as we’ve
seen, the potential damages from these suits are astronomical: If a family’s computer is used to download a single CD’s worth of music, the
family could be liable for $2 million in damages. That didn’t stop the
RIAA from suing a number of these families, just as they had sued
Jesse Jordan.20
Even this understates the espionage that is being waged by the
RIAA. A report from CNN late last summer described a strategy the
RIAA had adopted to track Napster users.21 Using a sophisticated
hashing algorithm, the RIAA took what is in effect a fingerprint of
every song in the Napster catalog. Any copy of one of those MP3s will
have the same “fingerprint.”
So imagine the following not-implausible scenario: Imagine a
friend gives a CD to your daughter—a collection of songs just like the
cassettes you used to make as a kid. You don’t know, and neither does
your daughter, where these songs came from. But she copies these
songs onto her computer. She then takes her computer to college and
connects it to a college network, and if the college network is “cooperating” with the RIAA’s espionage, and she hasn’t properly protected
her content from the network (do you know how to do that yourself ?),
then the RIAA will be able to identify your daughter as a “criminal.”
And under the rules that universities are beginning to deploy,22 your
daughter can lose the right to use the university’s computer network.
She can, in some cases, be expelled.
Now, of course, she’ll have the right to defend herself. You can hire
a lawyer for her (at $300 per hour, if you’re lucky), and she can plead
that she didn’t know anything about the source of the songs or that
they came from Napster. And it may well be that the university believes
her. But the university might not believe her. It might treat this “contraband” as presumptive of guilt. And as any number of college students

206 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 207

have already learned, our presumptions about innocence disappear in
the middle of wars of prohibition. This war is no different.
Says von Lohmann,
So when we’re talking about numbers like forty to sixty million
Americans that are essentially copyright infringers, you create a
situation where the civil liberties of those people are very much in
peril in a general matter. [I don’t] think [there is any] analog
where you could randomly choose any person off the street and be
confident that they were committing an unlawful act that could
put them on the hook for potential felony liability or hundreds of
millions of dollars of civil liability. Certainly we all speed, but
speeding isn’t the kind of an act for which we routinely forfeit
civil liberties. Some people use drugs, and I think that’s the closest analog, [but] many have noted that the war against drugs has
eroded all of our civil liberties because it’s treated so many Americans as criminals. Well, I think it’s fair to say that file sharing
is an order of magnitude larger number of Americans than drug
use. . . . If forty to sixty million Americans have become lawbreakers, then we’re really on a slippery slope to lose a lot of civil
liberties for all forty to sixty million of them.

When forty to sixty million Americans are considered “criminals”
under the law, and when the law could achieve the same objective—
securing rights to authors—without these millions being considered
“criminals,” who is the villain? Americans or the law? Which is American, a constant war on our own people or a concerted effort through
our democracy to change our law?

So here’s the picture: You’re standing at the side of the road. Your
car is on fire. You are angry and upset because in part you helped start
the fire. Now you don’t know how to put it out. Next to you is a bucket,
filled with gasoline. Obviously, gasoline won’t put the fire out.
As you ponder the mess, someone else comes along. In a panic, she
grabs the bucket. Before you have a chance to tell her to stop—or before she understands just why she should stop—the bucket is in the air.
The gasoline is about to hit the blazing car. And the fire that gasoline
will ignite is about to ignite everything around.

A war about copyright rages all around—and we’re all focusing on the
wrong thing. No doubt, current technologies threaten existing businesses. No doubt they may threaten artists. But technologies change.
The industry and technologists have plenty of ways to use technology
to protect themselves against the current threats of the Internet. This
is a fire that if let alone would burn itself out.
211

Yet policy makers are not willing to leave this fire to itself. Primed
with plenty of lobbyistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; money, they are keen to intervene to eliminate
the problem they perceive. But the problem they perceive is not the real
threat this culture faces. For while we watch this small fire in the corner, there is a massive change in the way culture is made that is happening all around.
Somehow we have to find a way to turn attention to this more important and fundamental issue. Somehow we have to find a way to
avoid pouring gasoline onto this fire.
We have not found that way yet. Instead, we seem trapped in a simpler, binary view. However much many people push to frame this debate more broadly, it is the simple, binary view that remains. We
rubberneck to look at the fire when we should be keeping our eyes on
the road.
This challenge has been my life these last few years. It has also been
my failure. In the two chapters that follow, I describe one small brace
of efforts, so far failed, to find a way to refocus this debate. We must
understand these failures if weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re to understand what success will require.

212 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 213

CHAPTER THIRTEEN:

Eldred

In 1995, a father was frustrated that his daughters didn’t seem to like
Hawthorne. No doubt there was more than one such father, but at least
one did something about it. Eric Eldred, a retired computer programmer living in New Hampshire, decided to put Hawthorne on the
Web. An electronic version, Eldred thought, with links to pictures and
explanatory text, would make this nineteenth-century author’s work
come alive.
It didn’t work—at least for his daughters. They didn’t find Hawthorne any more interesting than before. But Eldred’s experiment gave
birth to a hobby, and his hobby begat a cause: Eldred would build a
library of public domain works by scanning these works and making
them available for free.
Eldred’s library was not simply a copy of certain public domain
works, though even a copy would have been of great value to people
across the world who can’t get access to printed versions of these
works. Instead, Eldred was producing derivative works from these
public domain works. Just as Disney turned Grimm into stories more
213

accessible to the twentieth century, Eldred transformed Hawthorne,
and many others, into a form more accessible—technically accessible—today.
Eldred’s freedom to do this with Hawthorne’s work grew from the
same source as Disney’s. Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter had passed into the
public domain in 1907. It was free for anyone to take without the permission of the Hawthorne estate or anyone else. Some, such as Dover
Press and Penguin Classics, take works from the public domain and
produce printed editions, which they sell in bookstores across the
country. Others, such as Disney, take these stories and turn them into
animated cartoons, sometimes successfully (Cinderella), sometimes not
(The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Treasure Planet). These are all commercial publications of public domain works.
The Internet created the possibility of noncommercial publications
of public domain works. Eldred’s is just one example. There are literally thousands of others. Hundreds of thousands from across the world
have discovered this platform of expression and now use it to share
works that are, by law, free for the taking. This has produced what we
might call the “noncommercial publishing industry,” which before the
Internet was limited to people with large egos or with political or social causes. But with the Internet, it includes a wide range of individuals and groups dedicated to spreading culture generally.1
As I said, Eldred lives in New Hampshire. In 1998, Robert Frost’s
collection of poems New Hampshire was slated to pass into the public
domain. Eldred wanted to post that collection in his free public library.
But Congress got in the way. As I described in chapter 10, in 1998, for
the eleventh time in forty years, Congress extended the terms of existing copyrights—this time by twenty years. Eldred would not be free to
add any works more recent than 1923 to his collection until 2019. Indeed, no copyrighted work would pass into the public domain until
that year (and not even then, if Congress extends the term again). By
contrast, in the same period, more than 1 million patents will pass into
the public domain.
214 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 215

This was the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act
(CTEA), enacted in memory of the congressman and former musician
Sonny Bono, who, his widow, Mary Bono, says, believed that “copyrights should be forever.”2
Eldred decided to fight this law. He first resolved to fight it through
civil disobedience. In a series of interviews, Eldred announced that he
would publish as planned, CTEA notwithstanding. But because of a
second law passed in 1998, the NET (No Electronic Theft) Act, his act
of publishing would make Eldred a felon—whether or not anyone
complained. This was a dangerous strategy for a disabled programmer
to undertake.
It was here that I became involved in Eldred’s battle. I was a constitutional scholar whose first passion was constitutional interpretation. And though constitutional law courses never focus upon the
Progress Clause of the Constitution, it had always struck me as importantly different. As you know, the Constitution says,
Congress has the power to promote the Progress of Science . . .
by securing for limited Times to Authors . . . exclusive Right to
their . . . Writings. . . .

As I’ve described, this clause is unique within the power-granting
clause of Article I, section 8 of our Constitution. Every other clause
granting power to Congress simply says Congress has the power to do
something—for example, to regulate “commerce among the several
states” or “declare War.” But here, the “something” is something quite specific—to “promote . . . Progress”—through means that are also specific—
by “securing” “exclusive Rights” (i.e., copyrights) “for limited Times.”
In the past forty years, Congress has gotten into the practice of extending existing terms of copyright protection. What puzzled me
about this was, if Congress has the power to extend existing terms,
then the Constitution’s requirement that terms be “limited” will have
no practical effect. If every time a copyright is about to expire, ConBALANCES 215

gress has the power to extend its term, then Congress can achieve what
the Constitution plainly forbids—perpetual terms “on the installment
plan,” as Professor Peter Jaszi so nicely put it.
As an academic, my first response was to hit the books. I remember
sitting late at the office, scouring on-line databases for any serious consideration of the question. No one had ever challenged Congress’s
practice of extending existing terms. That failure may in part be why
Congress seemed so untroubled in its habit. That, and the fact that the
practice had become so lucrative for Congress. Congress knows that
copyright owners will be willing to pay a great deal of money to see
their copyright terms extended. And so Congress is quite happy to
keep this gravy train going.
For this is the core of the corruption in our present system of
government. “Corruption” not in the sense that representatives are bribed.
Rather, “corruption” in the sense that the system induces the beneficiaries of Congress’s acts to raise and give money to Congress to induce
it to act. There’s only so much time; there’s only so much Congress can
do. Why not limit its actions to those things it must do—and those
things that pay? Extending copyright terms pays.
If that’s not obvious to you, consider the following: Say you’re one
of the very few lucky copyright owners whose copyright continues to
make money one hundred years after it was created. The Estate of
Robert Frost is a good example. Frost died in 1963. His poetry continues to be extraordinarily valuable. Thus the Robert Frost estate benefits greatly from any extension of copyright, since no publisher would
pay the estate any money if the poems Frost wrote could be published
by anyone for free.
So imagine the Robert Frost estate is earning $100,000 a year from
three of Frost’s poems. And imagine the copyright for those poems
is about to expire. You sit on the board of the Robert Frost estate.
Your financial adviser comes to your board meeting with a very grim
report:
“Next year,” the adviser announces, “our copyrights in works A, B,
216 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 217

and C will expire. That means that after next year, we will no longer be
receiving the annual royalty check of $100,000 from the publishers of
those works.
“There’s a proposal in Congress, however,” she continues, “that
could change this. A few congressmen are floating a bill to extend the
terms of copyright by twenty years. That bill would be extraordinarily
valuable to us. So we should hope this bill passes.”
“Hope?” a fellow board member says. “Can’t we be doing something
about it?”
“Well, obviously, yes,” the adviser responds. “We could contribute
to the campaigns of a number of representatives to try to assure that
they support the bill.”
You hate politics. You hate contributing to campaigns. So you want
to know whether this disgusting practice is worth it. “How much
would we get if this extension were passed?” you ask the adviser. “How
much is it worth?”
“Well,” the adviser says, “if you’re confident that you will continue
to get at least $100,000 a year from these copyrights, and you use the
‘discount rate’ that we use to evaluate estate investments (6 percent),
then this law would be worth $1,146,000 to the estate.”
You’re a bit shocked by the number, but you quickly come to the
correct conclusion:
“So you’re saying it would be worth it for us to pay more than
$1,000,000 in campaign contributions if we were confident those contributions would assure that the bill was passed?”
“Absolutely,” the adviser responds. “It is worth it to you to contribute up to the ‘present value’ of the income you expect from these
copyrights. Which for us means over $1,000,000.”
You quickly get the point—you as the member of the board and, I
trust, you the reader. Each time copyrights are about to expire, every
beneficiary in the position of the Robert Frost estate faces the same
choice: If they can contribute to get a law passed to extend copyrights,
they will benefit greatly from that extension. And so each time copyBALANCES 217

rights are about to expire, there is a massive amount of lobbying to get
the copyright term extended.
Thus a congressional perpetual motion machine: So long as legislation can be bought (albeit indirectly), there will be all the incentive in
the world to buy further extensions of copyright.
In the lobbying that led to the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, this “theory” about incentives was proved
real. Ten of the thirteen original sponsors of the act in the House
received the maximum contribution from Disney’s political action
committee; in the Senate, eight of the twelve sponsors received contributions.3 The RIAA and the MPAA are estimated to have spent over
$1.5 million lobbying in the 1998 election cycle. They paid out more
than $200,000 in campaign contributions.4 Disney is estimated to have
contributed more than $800,000 to reelection campaigns in the 1998
cycle.5

Constitutional law is not oblivious to the obvious. Or at least,
it need not be. So when I was considering Eldred’s complaint, this reality about the never-ending incentives to increase the copyright term
was central to my thinking. In my view, a pragmatic court committed
to interpreting and applying the Constitution of our framers would see
that if Congress has the power to extend existing terms, then there
would be no effective constitutional requirement that terms be “limited.” If they could extend it once, they would extend it again and again
and again.
It was also my judgment that this Supreme Court would not allow
Congress to extend existing terms. As anyone close to the Supreme
Court’s work knows, this Court has increasingly restricted the power
of Congress when it has viewed Congress’s actions as exceeding the
power granted to it by the Constitution. Among constitutional scholars, the most famous example of this trend was the Supreme Court’s

218 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 219

decision in 1995 to strike down a law that banned the possession of
guns near schools.
Since 1937, the Supreme Court had interpreted Congress’s granted
powers very broadly; so, while the Constitution grants Congress the
power to regulate only “commerce among the several states” (aka “interstate commerce”), the Supreme Court had interpreted that power to
include the power to regulate any activity that merely affected interstate commerce.
As the economy grew, this standard increasingly meant that there
was no limit to Congress’s power to regulate, since just about every activity, when considered on a national scale, affects interstate commerce.
A Constitution designed to limit Congress’s power was instead interpreted to impose no limit.
The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Rehnquist’s command,
changed that in United States v. Lopez. The government had argued
that possessing guns near schools affected interstate commerce. Guns
near schools increase crime, crime lowers property values, and so on. In
the oral argument, the Chief Justice asked the government whether
there was any activity that would not affect interstate commerce under
the reasoning the government advanced. The government said there
was not; if Congress says an activity affects interstate commerce, then
that activity affects interstate commerce. The Supreme Court, the government said, was not in the position to second-guess Congress.
“We pause to consider the implications of the government’s arguments,” the Chief Justice wrote.6 If anything Congress says is interstate
commerce must therefore be considered interstate commerce, then
there would be no limit to Congress’s power. The decision in Lopez was
reaffirmed five years later in United States v. Morrison.7
If a principle were at work here, then it should apply to the Progress
Clause as much as the Commerce Clause.8 And if it is applied to the
Progress Clause, the principle should yield the conclusion that Congress can’t extend an existing term. If Congress could extend an exist-

ing term, then there would be no “stopping point” to Congress’s power
over terms, though the Constitution expressly states that there is such
a limit. Thus, the same principle applied to the power to grant copyrights should entail that Congress is not allowed to extend the term of
existing copyrights.
If, that is, the principle announced in Lopez stood for a principle.
Many believed the decision in Lopez stood for politics—a conservative
Supreme Court, which believed in states’ rights, using its power over
Congress to advance its own personal political preferences. But I rejected that view of the Supreme Court’s decision. Indeed, shortly after
the decision, I wrote an article demonstrating the “fidelity” in such an
interpretation of the Constitution. The idea that the Supreme Court
decides cases based upon its politics struck me as extraordinarily boring. I was not going to devote my life to teaching constitutional law if
these nine Justices were going to be petty politicians.

Now let’s pause for a moment to make sure we understand what
the argument in Eldred was not about. By insisting on the Constitution’s limits to copyright, obviously Eldred was not endorsing piracy.
Indeed, in an obvious sense, he was fighting a kind of piracy—piracy of
the public domain. When Robert Frost wrote his work and when Walt
Disney created Mickey Mouse, the maximum copyright term was just
fifty-six years. Because of interim changes, Frost and Disney had already enjoyed a seventy-five-year monopoly for their work. They had
gotten the benefit of the bargain that the Constitution envisions: In
exchange for a monopoly protected for fifty-six years, they created new
work. But now these entities were using their power—expressed
through the power of lobbyists’ money—to get another twenty-year
dollop of monopoly. That twenty-year dollop would be taken from the
public domain. Eric Eldred was fighting a piracy that affects us all.
Some people view the public domain with contempt. In their brief

220 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 221

before the Supreme Court, the Nashville Songwriters Association
wrote that the public domain is nothing more than “legal piracy.”9 But
it is not piracy when the law allows it; and in our constitutional system,
our law requires it. Some may not like the Constitution’s requirements,
but that doesn’t make the Constitution a pirate’s charter.
As we’ve seen, our constitutional system requires limits on copyright as a way to assure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the development and distribution of our culture. Yet, as Eric
Eldred discovered, we have set up a system that assures that copyright
terms will be repeatedly extended, and extended, and extended. We
have created the perfect storm for the public domain. Copyrights have
not expired, and will not expire, so long as Congress is free to be
bought to extend them again.

It is valuable copyrights that are responsible for terms being extended. Mickey Mouse and “Rhapsody in Blue.” These works are too
valuable for copyright owners to ignore. But the real harm to our society from copyright extensions is not that Mickey Mouse remains Disney’s. Forget Mickey Mouse. Forget Robert Frost. Forget all the works
from the 1920s and 1930s that have continuing commercial value. The
real harm of term extension comes not from these famous works. The
real harm is to the works that are not famous, not commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result.
If you look at the work created in the first twenty years (1923 to
1942) affected by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act,
2 percent of that work has any continuing commercial value. It was the
copyright holders for that 2 percent who pushed the CTEA through.
But the law and its effect were not limited to that 2 percent. The law
extended the terms of copyright generally.10
Think practically about the consequence of this extension—practically, as a businessperson, and not as a lawyer eager for more legal

work. In 1930, 10,047 books were published. In 2000, 174 of those
books were still in print. Let’s say you were Brewster Kahle, and you
wanted to make available to the world in your iArchive project the remaining 9,873. What would you have to do?
Well, first, you’d have to determine which of the 9,873 books were
still under copyright. That requires going to a library (these data are
not on-line) and paging through tomes of books, cross-checking the
titles and authors of the 9,873 books with the copyright registration
and renewal records for works published in 1930. That will produce a
list of books still under copyright.
Then for the books still under copyright, you would need to locate
the current copyright owners. How would you do that?
Most people think that there must be a list of these copyright owners somewhere. Practical people think this way. How could there be
thousands and thousands of government monopolies without there
being at least a list?
But there is no list. There may be a name from 1930, and then in
1959, of the person who registered the copyright. But just think practically about how impossibly difficult it would be to track down thousands of such records—especially since the person who registered is
not necessarily the current owner. And we’re just talking about 1930!
“But there isn’t a list of who owns property generally,” the apologists for the system respond. “Why should there be a list of copyright
owners?”
Well, actually, if you think about it, there are plenty of lists of who
owns what property. Think about deeds on houses, or titles to cars.
And where there isn’t a list, the code of real space is pretty good at suggesting who the owner of a bit of property is. (A swing set in your
backyard is probably yours.) So formally or informally, we have a pretty
good way to know who owns what tangible property.
So: You walk down a street and see a house. You can know who
owns the house by looking it up in the courthouse registry. If you see
a car, there is ordinarily a license plate that will link the owner to the
222 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 223

car. If you see a bunch of children’s toys sitting on the front lawn of a
house, it’s fairly easy to determine who owns the toys. And if you happen to see a baseball lying in a gutter on the side of the road, look
around for a second for some kids playing ball. If you don’t see any
kids, then okay: Here’s a bit of property whose owner we can’t easily
determine. It is the exception that proves the rule: that we ordinarily
know quite well who owns what property.
Compare this story to intangible property. You go into a library.
The library owns the books. But who owns the copyrights? As I’ve already described, there’s no list of copyright owners. There are authors’
names, of course, but their copyrights could have been assigned, or
passed down in an estate like Grandma’s old jewelry. To know who
owns what, you would have to hire a private detective. The bottom
line: The owner cannot easily be located. And in a regime like ours, in
which it is a felony to use such property without the property owner’s
permission, the property isn’t going to be used.
The consequence with respect to old books is that they won’t be
digitized, and hence will simply rot away on shelves. But the consequence for other creative works is much more dire.
Consider the story of Michael Agee, chairman of Hal Roach Studios, which owns the copyrights for the Laurel and Hardy films. Agee
is a direct beneficiary of the Bono Act. The Laurel and Hardy films
were made between 1921 and 1951. Only one of these films, The Lucky
Dog, is currently out of copyright. But for the CTEA, films made after
1923 would have begun entering the public domain. Because Agee
controls the exclusive rights for these popular films, he makes a great
deal of money. According to one estimate, “Roach has sold about
60,000 videocassettes and 50,000 DVDs of the duo’s silent films.”11
Yet Agee opposed the CTEA. His reasons demonstrate a rare
virtue in this culture: selflessness. He argued in a brief before the
Supreme Court that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act
will, if left standing, destroy a whole generation of American film.
His argument is straightforward. A tiny fraction of this work has
BALANCES 223

any continuing commercial value. The rest—to the extent it survives at
all—sits in vaults gathering dust. It may be that some of this work not
now commercially valuable will be deemed to be valuable by the owners of the vaults. For this to occur, however, the commercial benefit
from the work must exceed the costs of making the work available for
distribution.
We can’t know the benefits, but we do know a lot about the costs.
For most of the history of film, the costs of restoring film were very
high; digital technology has lowered these costs substantially. While
it cost more than $10,000 to restore a ninety-minute black-and-white
film in 1993, it can now cost as little as $100 to digitize one hour of 8
mm film.12
Restoration technology is not the only cost, nor the most important. Lawyers, too, are a cost, and increasingly, a very important one. In
addition to preserving the film, a distributor needs to secure the rights.
And to secure the rights for a film that is under copyright, you need to
locate the copyright owner.
Or more accurately, owners. As we’ve seen, there isn’t only a single
copyright associated with a film; there are many. There isn’t a single
person whom you can contact about those copyrights; there are as
many as can hold the rights, which turns out to be an extremely large
number. Thus the costs of clearing the rights to these films is exceptionally high.
“But can’t you just restore the film, distribute it, and then pay the
copyright owner when she shows up?” Sure, if you want to commit a
felony. And even if you’re not worried about committing a felony, when
she does show up, she’ll have the right to sue you for all the profits you
have made. So, if you’re successful, you can be fairly confident you’ll be
getting a call from someone’s lawyer. And if you’re not successful, you
won’t make enough to cover the costs of your own lawyer. Either way,
you have to talk to a lawyer. And as is too often the case, saying you have
to talk to a lawyer is the same as saying you won’t make any money.
For some films, the benefit of releasing the film may well exceed
224 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 225

these costs. But for the vast majority of them, there is no way the benefit would outweigh the legal costs. Thus, for the vast majority of old
films, Agee argued, the film will not be restored and distributed until
the copyright expires.
But by the time the copyright for these films expires, the film will
have expired. These films were produced on nitrate-based stock, and
nitrate stock dissolves over time. They will be gone, and the metal canisters in which they are now stored will be filled with nothing more
than dust.

Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny
fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the
copyright is a crucially important legal device. For that tiny fraction,
the copyright creates incentives to produce and distribute the creative work. For that tiny fraction, the copyright acts as an “engine of
free expression.”
But even for that tiny fraction, the actual time during which the
creative work has a commercial life is extremely short. As I’ve indicated, most books go out of print within one year. The same is true of
music and film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving.
And when a creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the commercial life ends.
Yet that doesn’t mean the life of the creative work ends. We don’t
keep libraries of books in order to compete with Barnes & Noble, and
we don’t have archives of films because we expect people to choose between spending Friday night watching new movies and spending Friday night watching a 1930 news documentary. The noncommercial life
of culture is important and valuable—for entertainment but also, and
more importantly, for knowledge. To understand who we are, and
where we came from, and how we have made the mistakes that we
have, we need to have access to this history.
Copyrights in this context do not drive an engine of free expression.
BALANCES 225

In this context, there is no need for an exclusive right. Copyrights in
this context do no good.
Yet, for most of our history, they also did little harm. For most of
our history, when a work ended its commercial life, there was no
copyright-related use that would be inhibited by an exclusive right.
When a book went out of print, you could not buy it from a publisher.
But you could still buy it from a used book store, and when a used book
store sells it, in America, at least, there is no need to pay the copyright
owner anything. Thus, the ordinary use of a book after its commercial
life ended was a use that was independent of copyright law.
The same was effectively true of film. Because the costs of restoring
a film—the real economic costs, not the lawyer costs—were so high, it
was never at all feasible to preserve or restore film. Like the remains of
a great dinner, when it’s over, it’s over. Once a film passed out of its
commercial life, it may have been archived for a bit, but that was the
end of its life so long as the market didn’t have more to offer.
In other words, though copyright has been relatively short for most
of our history, long copyrights wouldn’t have mattered for the works
that lost their commercial value. Long copyrights for these works
would not have interfered with anything.
But this situation has now changed.
One crucially important consequence of the emergence of digital
technologies is to enable the archive that Brewster Kahle dreams of.
Digital technologies now make it possible to preserve and give access
to all sorts of knowledge. Once a book goes out of print, we can now
imagine digitizing it and making it available to everyone, forever. Once
a film goes out of distribution, we could digitize it and make it available to everyone, forever. Digital technologies give new life to copyrighted material after it passes out of its commercial life. It is now
possible to preserve and assure universal access to this knowledge and
culture, whereas before it was not.
And now copyright law does get in the way. Every step of produc-

226 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 227

ing this digital archive of our culture infringes on the exclusive right of
copyright. To digitize a book is to copy it. To do that requires permission of the copyright owner. The same with music, film, or any other
aspect of our culture protected by copyright. The effort to make these
things available to history, or to researchers, or to those who just want
to explore, is now inhibited by a set of rules that were written for a radically different context.
Here is the core of the harm that comes from extending terms:
Now that technology enables us to rebuild the library of Alexandria,
the law gets in the way. And it doesn’t get in the way for any useful
copyright purpose, for the purpose of copyright is to enable the commercial market that spreads culture. No, we are talking about culture
after it has lived its commercial life. In this context, copyright is serving no purpose at all related to the spread of knowledge. In this context, copyright is not an engine of free expression. Copyright is a brake.
You may well ask, “But if digital technologies lower the costs for
Brewster Kahle, then they will lower the costs for Random House, too.
So won’t Random House do as well as Brewster Kahle in spreading
culture widely?”
Maybe. Someday. But there is absolutely no evidence to suggest
that publishers would be as complete as libraries. If Barnes & Noble
offered to lend books from its stores for a low price, would that eliminate the need for libraries? Only if you think that the only role of a library is to serve what “the market” would demand. But if you think the
role of a library is bigger than this—if you think its role is to archive
culture, whether there’s a demand for any particular bit of that culture
or not—then we can’t count on the commercial market to do our library work for us.
I would be the first to agree that it should do as much as it can: We
should rely upon the market as much as possible to spread and enable
culture. My message is absolutely not antimarket. But where we see the
market is not doing the job, then we should allow nonmarket forces the

freedom to fill the gaps. As one researcher calculated for American culture, 94 percent of the films, books, and music produced between 1923
and 1946 is not commercially available. However much you love the
commercial market, if access is a value, then 6 percent is a failure to
provide that value.13

In January 1999, we filed a lawsuit on Eric Eldred’s behalf in federal district court in Washington, D.C., asking the court to declare the
Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act unconstitutional. The two
central claims that we made were (1) that extending existing terms violated the Constitution’s “limited Times” requirement, and (2) that extending terms by another twenty years violated the First Amendment.
The district court dismissed our claims without even hearing an argument. A panel of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit also dismissed our claims, though after hearing an extensive argument. But
that decision at least had a dissent, by one of the most conservative
judges on that court. That dissent gave our claims life.
Judge David Sentelle said the CTEA violated the requirement that
copyrights be for “limited Times” only. His argument was as elegant as
it was simple: If Congress can extend existing terms, then there is no
“stopping point” to Congress’s power under the Copyright Clause. The
power to extend existing terms means Congress is not required to grant
terms that are “limited.” Thus, Judge Sentelle argued, the court had to
interpret the term “limited Times” to give it meaning. And the best interpretation, Judge Sentelle argued, would be to deny Congress the
power to extend existing terms.
We asked the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit as a whole to
hear the case. Cases are ordinarily heard in panels of three, except for
important cases or cases that raise issues specific to the circuit as a
whole, where the court will sit “en banc” to hear the case.
The Court of Appeals rejected our request to hear the case en banc.
This time, Judge Sentelle was joined by the most liberal member of the
228 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 229

D.C. Circuit, Judge David Tatel. Both the most conservative and the
most liberal judges in the D.C. Circuit believed Congress had overstepped its bounds.
It was here that most expected Eldred v. Ashcroft would die, for the
Supreme Court rarely reviews any decision by a court of appeals. (It
hears about one hundred cases a year, out of more than five thousand
appeals.) And it practically never reviews a decision that upholds a
statute when no other court has yet reviewed the statute.
But in February 2002, the Supreme Court surprised the world by
granting our petition to review the D.C. Circuit opinion. Argument
was set for October of 2002. The summer would be spent writing
briefs and preparing for argument.

It is over a year later as I write these words. It is still astonishingly
hard. If you know anything at all about this story, you know that we
lost the appeal. And if you know something more than just the minimum, you probably think there was no way this case could have been
won. After our defeat, I received literally thousands of missives by
well-wishers and supporters, thanking me for my work on behalf of
this noble but doomed cause. And none from this pile was more significant to me than the e-mail from my client, Eric Eldred.
But my client and these friends were wrong. This case could have
been won. It should have been won. And no matter how hard I try to
retell this story to myself, I can never escape believing that my own
mistake lost it.

The mistake was made early, though it became obvious only at the
very end. Our case had been supported from the very beginning by an extraordinary lawyer, Geoffrey Stewart, and by the law firm he had moved
to, Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue. Jones Day took a great deal of heat
from its copyright-protectionist clients for supporting us. They igBALANCES 229

nored this pressure (something that few law firms today would ever
do), and throughout the case, they gave it everything they could.
There were three key lawyers on the case from Jones Day. Geoff
Stewart was the first, but then Dan Bromberg and Don Ayer became
quite involved. Bromberg and Ayer in particular had a common view
about how this case would be won: We would only win, they repeatedly
told me, if we could make the issue seem “important” to the Supreme
Court. It had to seem as if dramatic harm were being done to free
speech and free culture; otherwise, they would never vote against “the
most powerful media companies in the world.”
I hate this view of the law. Of course I thought the Sonny Bono Act
was a dramatic harm to free speech and free culture. Of course I still
think it is. But the idea that the Supreme Court decides the law based
on how important they believe the issues are is just wrong. It might be
“right” as in “true,” I thought, but it is “wrong” as in “it just shouldn’t be
that way.” As I believed that any faithful interpretation of what the
framers of our Constitution did would yield the conclusion that the
CTEA was unconstitutional, and as I believed that any faithful interpretation of what the First Amendment means would yield the
conclusion that the power to extend existing copyright terms is unconstitutional, I was not persuaded that we had to sell our case like soap.
Just as a law that bans the swastika is unconstitutional not because the
Court likes Nazis but because such a law would violate the Constitution, so too, in my view, would the Court decide whether Congress’s
law was constitutional based on the Constitution, not based on whether
they liked the values that the framers put in the Constitution.
In any case, I thought, the Court must already see the danger and
the harm caused by this sort of law. Why else would they grant review?
There was no reason to hear the case in the Supreme Court if they
weren’t convinced that this regulation was harmful. So in my view, we
didn’t need to persuade them that this law was bad, we needed to show
why it was unconstitutional.
There was one way, however, in which I felt politics would matter
230 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 231

and in which I thought a response was appropriate. I was convinced
that the Court would not hear our arguments if it thought these were
just the arguments of a group of lefty loons. This Supreme Court was
not about to launch into a new field of judicial review if it seemed that
this field of review was simply the preference of a small political minority. Although my focus in the case was not to demonstrate how bad the
Sonny Bono Act was but to demonstrate that it was unconstitutional,
my hope was to make this argument against a background of briefs that
covered the full range of political views. To show that this claim against
the CTEA was grounded in law and not politics, then, we tried to
gather the widest range of credible critics—credible not because they
were rich and famous, but because they, in the aggregate, demonstrated
that this law was unconstitutional regardless of one’s politics.
The first step happened all by itself. Phyllis Schlafly’s organization,
Eagle Forum, had been an opponent of the CTEA from the very beginning. Mrs. Schlafly viewed the CTEA as a sellout by Congress. In
November 1998, she wrote a stinging editorial attacking the Republican Congress for allowing the law to pass. As she wrote, “Do you
sometimes wonder why bills that create a financial windfall to narrow
special interests slide easily through the intricate legislative process,
while bills that benefit the general public seem to get bogged down?”
The answer, as the editorial documented, was the power of money.
Schlafly enumerated Disney’s contributions to the key players on the
committees. It was money, not justice, that gave Mickey Mouse twenty
more years in Disney’s control, Schlafly argued.
In the Court of Appeals, Eagle Forum was eager to file a brief supporting our position. Their brief made the argument that became the
core claim in the Supreme Court: If Congress can extend the term of
existing copyrights, there is no limit to Congress’s power to set terms.
That strong conservative argument persuaded a strong conservative
judge, Judge Sentelle.
In the Supreme Court, the briefs on our side were about as diverse
as it gets. They included an extraordinary historical brief by the Free
BALANCES 231

Software Foundation (home of the GNU project that made GNU/
Linux possible). They included a powerful brief about the costs of uncertainty by Intel. There were two law professors’ briefs, one by copyright scholars and one by First Amendment scholars. There was an
exhaustive and uncontroverted brief by the world’s experts in the history of the Progress Clause. And of course, there was a new brief by
Eagle Forum, repeating and strengthening its arguments.
Those briefs framed a legal argument. Then to support the legal
argument, there were a number of powerful briefs by libraries and
archives, including the Internet Archive, the American Association of
Law Libraries, and the National Writers Union.
But two briefs captured the policy argument best. One made the argument I’ve already described: A brief by Hal Roach Studios argued that
unless the law was struck, a whole generation of American film would
disappear. The other made the economic argument absolutely clear.
This economists’ brief was signed by seventeen economists, including
five Nobel Prize winners, including Ronald Coase, James Buchanan,
Milton Friedman, Kenneth Arrow, and George Akerlof. The economists, as the list of Nobel winners demonstrates, spanned the political
spectrum. Their conclusions were powerful: There was no plausible
claim that extending the terms of existing copyrights would do anything
to increase incentives to create. Such extensions were nothing more
than “rent-seeking”—the fancy term economists use to describe
special-interest legislation gone wild.
The same effort at balance was reflected in the legal team we gathered to write our briefs in the case. The Jones Day lawyers had been
with us from the start. But when the case got to the Supreme Court,
we added three lawyers to help us frame this argument to this Court:
Alan Morrison, a lawyer from Public Citizen, a Washington group
that had made constitutional history with a series of seminal victories
in the Supreme Court defending individual rights; my colleague and
dean, Kathleen Sullivan, who had argued many cases in the Court, and

232 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:03 PM Page 233

who had advised us early on about a First Amendment strategy; and finally, former solicitor general Charles Fried.
Fried was a special victory for our side. Every other former solicitor
general was hired by the other side to defend Congress’s power to give
media companies the special favor of extended copyright terms. Fried
was the only one who turned down that lucrative assignment to stand
up for something he believed in. He had been Ronald Reagan’s chief
lawyer in the Supreme Court. He had helped craft the line of cases that
limited Congress’s power in the context of the Commerce Clause. And
while he had argued many positions in the Supreme Court that I personally disagreed with, his joining the cause was a vote of confidence in
our argument.
The government, in defending the statute, had its collection of
friends, as well. Significantly, however, none of these “friends” included
historians or economists. The briefs on the other side of the case were
written exclusively by major media companies, congressmen, and
copyright holders.
The media companies were not surprising. They had the most to
gain from the law. The congressmen were not surprising either—they
were defending their power and, indirectly, the gravy train of contributions such power induced. And of course it was not surprising that the
copyright holders would defend the idea that they should continue to
have the right to control who did what with content they wanted to
control.
Dr. Seuss’s representatives, for example, argued that it was better for
the Dr. Seuss estate to control what happened to Dr. Seuss’s work—
better than allowing it to fall into the public domain—because if this
creativity were in the public domain, then people could use it to “glorify drugs or to create pornography.”14 That was also the motive of
the Gershwin estate, which defended its “protection” of the work of
George Gershwin. They refuse, for example, to license Porgy and Bess
to anyone who refuses to use African Americans in the cast.15 That’s

their view of how this part of American culture should be controlled,
and they wanted this law to help them effect that control.
This argument made clear a theme that is rarely noticed in this debate. When Congress decides to extend the term of existing copyrights, Congress is making a choice about which speakers it will favor.
Famous and beloved copyright owners, such as the Gershwin estate
and Dr. Seuss, come to Congress and say, “Give us twenty years to control the speech about these icons of American culture. We’ll do better
with them than anyone else.” Congress of course likes to reward the
popular and famous by giving them what they want. But when Congress gives people an exclusive right to speak in a certain way, that’s just
what the First Amendment is traditionally meant to block.
We argued as much in a final brief. Not only would upholding the
CTEA mean that there was no limit to the power of Congress to extend
copyrights—extensions that would further concentrate the market; it
would also mean that there was no limit to Congress’s power to play favorites, through copyright, with who has the right to speak.

Between February and October, there was little I did beyond
preparing for this case. Early on, as I said, I set the strategy.
The Supreme Court was divided into two important camps. One
camp we called “the Conservatives.” The other we called “the Rest.”
The Conservatives included Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice O’Connor,
Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Thomas. These five had
been the most consistent in limiting Congress’s power. They were the
five who had supported the Lopez/Morrison line of cases that said that
an enumerated power had to be interpreted to assure that Congress’s
powers had limits.
The Rest were the four Justices who had strongly opposed limits on
Congress’s power. These four—Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, Justice
Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer—had repeatedly argued that the Constitution gives Congress broad discretion to decide how best to imple234 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 235

ment its powers. In case after case, these justices had argued that the
Court’s role should be one of deference. Though the votes of these four
justices were the votes that I personally had most consistently agreed
with, they were also the votes that we were least likely to get.
In particular, the least likely was Justice Ginsburg’s. In addition to
her general view about deference to Congress (except where issues of
gender are involved), she had been particularly deferential in the context of intellectual property protections. She and her daughter (an excellent and well-known intellectual property scholar) were cut from
the same intellectual property cloth. We expected she would agree with
the writings of her daughter: that Congress had the power in this context to do as it wished, even if what Congress wished made little sense.
Close behind Justice Ginsburg were two justices whom we also
viewed as unlikely allies, though possible surprises. Justice Souter
strongly favored deference to Congress, as did Justice Breyer. But both
were also very sensitive to free speech concerns. And as we strongly believed, there was a very important free speech argument against these
retrospective extensions.
The only vote we could be confident about was that of Justice
Stevens. History will record Justice Stevens as one of the greatest
judges on this Court. His votes are consistently eclectic, which just
means that no simple ideology explains where he will stand. But he
had consistently argued for limits in the context of intellectual property
generally. We were fairly confident he would recognize limits here.
This analysis of “the Rest” showed most clearly where our focus
had to be: on the Conservatives. To win this case, we had to crack open
these five and get at least a majority to go our way. Thus, the single overriding argument that animated our claim rested on the Conservatives’
most important jurisprudential innovation—the argument that Judge
Sentelle had relied upon in the Court of Appeals, that Congress’s power
must be interpreted so that its enumerated powers have limits.
This then was the core of our strategy—a strategy for which I am
responsible. We would get the Court to see that just as with the Lopez
BALANCES 235

case, under the government’s argument here, Congress would always
have unlimited power to extend existing terms. If anything was plain
about Congress’s power under the Progress Clause, it was that this
power was supposed to be “limited.” Our aim would be to get the
Court to reconcile Eldred with Lopez: If Congress’s power to regulate
commerce was limited, then so, too, must Congress’s power to regulate
copyright be limited.

The argument on the government’s side came down to this: Congress has done it before. It should be allowed to do it again. The government claimed that from the very beginning, Congress has been
extending the term of existing copyrights. So, the government argued,
the Court should not now say that practice is unconstitutional.
There was some truth to the government’s claim, but not much. We
certainly agreed that Congress had extended existing terms in 1831
and in 1909. And of course, in 1962, Congress began extending existing terms regularly—eleven times in forty years.
But this “consistency” should be kept in perspective. Congress extended existing terms once in the first hundred years of the Republic.
It then extended existing terms once again in the next fifty. Those rare
extensions are in contrast to the now regular practice of extending existing terms. Whatever restraint Congress had had in the past, that restraint was now gone. Congress was now in a cycle of extensions; there
was no reason to expect that cycle would end. This Court had not hesitated to intervene where Congress was in a similar cycle of extension.
There was no reason it couldn’t intervene here.

Oral argument was scheduled for the first week in October. I arrived in D.C. two weeks before the argument. During those two
weeks, I was repeatedly “mooted” by lawyers who had volunteered to

236 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 237

help in the case. Such “moots” are basically practice rounds, where
wannabe justices fire questions at wannabe winners.
I was convinced that to win, I had to keep the Court focused on a
single point: that if this extension is permitted, then there is no limit to
the power to set terms. Going with the government would mean that
terms would be effectively unlimited; going with us would give Congress a clear line to follow: Don’t extend existing terms. The moots
were an effective practice; I found ways to take every question back to
this central idea.
One moot was before the lawyers at Jones Day. Don Ayer was the
skeptic. He had served in the Reagan Justice Department with Solicitor General Charles Fried. He had argued many cases before the
Supreme Court. And in his review of the moot, he let his concern
speak:
“I’m just afraid that unless they really see the harm, they won’t be
willing to upset this practice that the government says has been a consistent practice for two hundred years. You have to make them see the
harm—passionately get them to see the harm. For if they don’t see
that, then we haven’t any chance of winning.”
He may have argued many cases before this Court, I thought, but
he didn’t understand its soul. As a clerk, I had seen the Justices do the
right thing—not because of politics but because it was right. As a law
professor, I had spent my life teaching my students that this Court
does the right thing—not because of politics but because it is right. As
I listened to Ayer’s plea for passion in pressing politics, I understood
his point, and I rejected it. Our argument was right. That was enough.
Let the politicians learn to see that it was also good.

The night before the argument, a line of people began to form
in front of the Supreme Court. The case had become a focus of the
press and of the movement to free culture. Hundreds stood in line

for the chance to see the proceedings. Scores spent the night on the
Supreme Court steps so that they would be assured a seat.
Not everyone has to wait in line. People who know the Justices can
ask for seats they control. (I asked Justice Scalia’s chambers for seats for
my parents, for example.) Members of the Supreme Court bar can get
a seat in a special section reserved for them. And senators and congressmen have a special place where they get to sit, too. And finally, of
course, the press has a gallery, as do clerks working for the Justices on
the Court. As we entered that morning, there was no place that was
not taken. This was an argument about intellectual property law, yet
the halls were filled. As I walked in to take my seat at the front of the
Court, I saw my parents sitting on the left. As I sat down at the table,
I saw Jack Valenti sitting in the special section ordinarily reserved for
family of the Justices.
When the Chief Justice called me to begin my argument, I began
where I intended to stay: on the question of the limits on Congress’s
power. This was a case about enumerated powers, I said, and whether
those enumerated powers had any limit.
Justice O’Connor stopped me within one minute of my opening.
The history was bothering her.
justice o’connor: Congress has extended the term so often
through the years, and if you are right, don’t we run the risk of
upsetting previous extensions of time? I mean, this seems to be a
practice that began with the very first act.

She was quite willing to concede “that this flies directly in the face
of what the framers had in mind.” But my response again and again
was to emphasize limits on Congress’s power.
mr. lessig: Well, if it flies in the face of what the framers had in
mind, then the question is, is there a way of interpreting their

238 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 239

words that gives effect to what they had in mind, and the answer
is yes.

There were two points in this argument when I should have seen
where the Court was going. The first was a question by Justice
Kennedy, who observed,
justice kennedy: Well, I suppose implicit in the argument that
the ’76 act, too, should have been declared void, and that we
might leave it alone because of the disruption, is that for all these
years the act has impeded progress in science and the useful arts.
I just don’t see any empirical evidence for that.

Here follows my clear mistake. Like a professor correcting a student, I answered,
mr. lessig: Justice, we are not making an empirical claim at all.
Nothing in our Copyright Clause claim hangs upon the empirical
assertion about impeding progress. Our only argument is this is a
structural limit necessary to assure that what would be an effectively perpetual term not be permitted under the copyright laws.

That was a correct answer, but it wasn’t the right answer. The right
answer was instead that there was an obvious and profound harm. Any
number of briefs had been written about it. He wanted to hear it. And
here was the place Don Ayer’s advice should have mattered. This was a
softball; my answer was a swing and a miss.
The second came from the Chief, for whom the whole case had
been crafted. For the Chief Justice had crafted the Lopez ruling, and we
hoped that he would see this case as its second cousin.
It was clear a second into his question that he wasn’t at all sympathetic. To him, we were a bunch of anarchists. As he asked:

chief justice: Well, but you want more than that. You want the
right to copy verbatim other people’s books, don’t you?
mr. lessig: We want the right to copy verbatim works that
should be in the public domain and would be in the public domain but for a statute that cannot be justified under ordinary First
Amendment analysis or under a proper reading of the limits built
into the Copyright Clause.

Things went better for us when the government gave its argument;
for now the Court picked up on the core of our claim. As Justice Scalia
asked Solicitor General Olson,
justice scalia: You say that the functional equivalent of an unlimited time would be a violation [of the Constitution], but that’s
precisely the argument that’s being made by petitioners here, that
a limited time which is extendable is the functional equivalent of
an unlimited time.

When Olson was finished, it was my turn to give a closing rebuttal.
Olson’s flailing had revived my anger. But my anger still was directed
to the academic, not the practical. The government was arguing as if
this were the first case ever to consider limits on Congress’s Copyright
and Patent Clause power. Ever the professor and not the advocate, I
closed by pointing out the long history of the Court imposing limits on
Congress’s power in the name of the Copyright and Patent Clause—
indeed, the very first case striking a law of Congress as exceeding a specific enumerated power was based upon the Copyright and Patent
Clause. All true. But it wasn’t going to move the Court to my side.

As I left the court that day, I knew there were a hundred points I
wished I could remake. There were a hundred questions I wished I had
240 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 241

answered differently. But one way of thinking about this case left me
optimistic.
The government had been asked over and over again, what is the
limit? Over and over again, it had answered there is no limit. This
was precisely the answer I wanted the Court to hear. For I could not
imagine how the Court could understand that the government believed Congress’s power was unlimited under the terms of the Copyright Clause, and sustain the government’s argument. The solicitor
general had made my argument for me. No matter how often I tried,
I could not understand how the Court could find that Congress’s
power under the Commerce Clause was limited, but under the Copyright Clause, unlimited. In those rare moments when I let myself believe that we may have prevailed, it was because I felt this Court—in
particular, the Conservatives—would feel itself constrained by the rule
of law that it had established elsewhere.

The morning of January 15, 2003, I was five minutes late to the office
and missed the 7:00 A.M. call from the Supreme Court clerk. Listening to
the message, I could tell in an instant that she had bad news to report.The
Supreme Court had affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals. Seven
justices had voted in the majority. There were two dissents.
A few seconds later, the opinions arrived by e-mail. I took the
phone off the hook, posted an announcement to our blog, and sat
down to see where I had been wrong in my reasoning.
My reasoning. Here was a case that pitted all the money in the
world against reasoning. And here was the last naïve law professor,
scouring the pages, looking for reasoning.
I first scoured the opinion, looking for how the Court would distinguish the principle in this case from the principle in Lopez. The argument was nowhere to be found. The case was not even cited. The
argument that was the core argument of our case did not even appear
in the Court’s opinion.
BALANCES 241

Justice Ginsburg simply ignored the enumerated powers argument.
Consistent with her view that Congress’s power was not limited generally, she had found Congress’s power not limited here.
Her opinion was perfectly reasonable—for her, and for Justice
Souter. Neither believes in Lopez. It would be too much to expect them
to write an opinion that recognized, much less explained, the doctrine
they had worked so hard to defeat.
But as I realized what had happened, I couldn’t quite believe what I
was reading. I had said there was no way this Court could reconcile
limited powers with the Commerce Clause and unlimited powers with
the Progress Clause. It had never even occurred to me that they could
reconcile the two simply by not addressing the argument. There was no
inconsistency because they would not talk about the two together.
There was therefore no principle that followed from the Lopez case: In
that context, Congress’s power would be limited, but in this context it
would not.
Yet by what right did they get to choose which of the framers’ values they would respect? By what right did they—the silent five—get to
select the part of the Constitution they would enforce based on the values they thought important? We were right back to the argument that
I said I hated at the start: I had failed to convince them that the issue
here was important, and I had failed to recognize that however much I
might hate a system in which the Court gets to pick the constitutional
values that it will respect, that is the system we have.
Justices Breyer and Stevens wrote very strong dissents. Stevens’s
opinion was crafted internal to the law: He argued that the tradition of
intellectual property law should not support this unjustified extension
of terms. He based his argument on a parallel analysis that had governed in the context of patents (so had we). But the rest of the Court
discounted the parallel—without explaining how the very same words
in the Progress Clause could come to mean totally different things depending upon whether the words were about patents or copyrights.
The Court let Justice Stevens’s charge go unanswered.
242 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 243

Justice Breyer’s opinion, perhaps the best opinion he has ever written, was external to the Constitution. He argued that the term of copyrights has become so long as to be effectively unlimited. We had said
that under the current term, a copyright gave an author 99.8 percent of
the value of a perpetual term. Breyer said we were wrong, that the actual number was 99.9997 percent of a perpetual term. Either way, the
point was clear: If the Constitution said a term had to be “limited,” and
the existing term was so long as to be effectively unlimited, then it was
unconstitutional.
These two justices understood all the arguments we had made. But
because neither believed in the Lopez case, neither was willing to push
it as a reason to reject this extension. The case was decided without
anyone having addressed the argument that we had carried from Judge
Sentelle. It was Hamlet without the Prince.

Defeat brings depression. They say it is a sign of health when
depression gives way to anger. My anger came quickly, but it didn’t cure
the depression. This anger was of two sorts.
It was first anger with the five “Conservatives.” It would have been
one thing for them to have explained why the principle of Lopez didn’t
apply in this case. That wouldn’t have been a very convincing argument, I don’t believe, having read it made by others, and having tried
to make it myself. But it at least would have been an act of integrity.
These justices in particular have repeatedly said that the proper mode
of interpreting the Constitution is “originalism”—to first understand
the framers’ text, interpreted in their context, in light of the structure
of the Constitution. That method had produced Lopez and many other
“originalist” rulings. Where was their “originalism” now?
Here, they had joined an opinion that never once tried to explain
what the framers had meant by crafting the Progress Clause as they
did; they joined an opinion that never once tried to explain how the
structure of that clause would affect the interpretation of Congress’s
BALANCES 243

power. And they joined an opinion that didn’t even try to explain why
this grant of power could be unlimited, whereas the Commerce Clause
would be limited. In short, they had joined an opinion that did not apply to, and was inconsistent with, their own method for interpreting
the Constitution. This opinion may well have yielded a result that they
liked. It did not produce a reason that was consistent with their own
principles.
My anger with the Conservatives quickly yielded to anger with myself. For I had let a view of the law that I liked interfere with a view of
the law as it is.
Most lawyers, and most law professors, have little patience for idealism about courts in general and this Supreme Court in particular.
Most have a much more pragmatic view. When Don Ayer said that
this case would be won based on whether I could convince the Justices
that the framers’ values were important, I fought the idea, because I
didn’t want to believe that that is how this Court decides. I insisted on
arguing this case as if it were a simple application of a set of principles.
I had an argument that followed in logic. I didn’t need to waste my
time showing it should also follow in popularity.
As I read back over the transcript from that argument in October, I
can see a hundred places where the answers could have taken the conversation in different directions, where the truth about the harm that
this unchecked power will cause could have been made clear to this
Court. Justice Kennedy in good faith wanted to be shown. I, idiotically,
corrected his question. Justice Souter in good faith wanted to be shown
the First Amendment harms. I, like a math teacher, reframed the question to make the logical point. I had shown them how they could strike
this law of Congress if they wanted to. There were a hundred places
where I could have helped them want to, yet my stubbornness, my refusal to give in, stopped me. I have stood before hundreds of audiences
trying to persuade; I have used passion in that effort to persuade; but I
refused to stand before this audience and try to persuade with the pas-

244 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 245

sion I had used elsewhere. It was not the basis on which a court should
decide the issue.
Would it have been different if I had argued it differently? Would it
have been different if Don Ayer had argued it? Or Charles Fried? Or
Kathleen Sullivan?
My friends huddled around me to insist it would not. The Court
was not ready, my friends insisted. This was a loss that was destined. It
would take a great deal more to show our society why our framers were
right. And when we do that, we will be able to show that Court.
Maybe, but I doubt it. These Justices have no financial interest in
doing anything except the right thing. They are not lobbied. They have
little reason to resist doing right. I can’t help but think that if I had
stepped down from this pretty picture of dispassionate justice, I could
have persuaded.
And even if I couldn’t, then that doesn’t excuse what happened in
January. For at the start of this case, one of America’s leading intellectual property professors stated publicly that my bringing this case was
a mistake. “The Court is not ready,” Peter Jaszi said; this issue should
not be raised until it is.
After the argument and after the decision, Peter said to me, and
publicly, that he was wrong. But if indeed that Court could not have
been persuaded, then that is all the evidence that’s needed to know that
here again Peter was right. Either I was not ready to argue this case in
a way that would do some good or they were not ready to hear this case
in a way that would do some good. Either way, the decision to bring
this case—a decision I had made four years before—was wrong.

While the reaction to the Sonny Bono Act itself was almost
unanimously negative, the reaction to the Court’s decision was mixed.
No one, at least in the press, tried to say that extending the term of
copyright was a good idea. We had won that battle over ideas. Where

the decision was praised, it was praised by papers that had been skeptical of the Court’s activism in other cases. Deference was a good thing,
even if it left standing a silly law. But where the decision was attacked,
it was attacked because it left standing a silly and harmful law. The New
York Times wrote in its editorial,
In effect, the Supreme Court’s decision makes it likely that we are
seeing the beginning of the end of public domain and the birth of
copyright perpetuity. The public domain has been a grand experiment, one that should not be allowed to die. The ability to draw
freely on the entire creative output of humanity is one of the reasons we live in a time of such fruitful creative ferment.

The best responses were in the cartoons. There was a gaggle of hilarious images—of Mickey in jail and the like. The best, from my view
of the case, was Ruben Bolling’s, reproduced on the next page. The
“powerful and wealthy” line is a bit unfair. But the punch in the face felt
exactly like that.
The image that will always stick in my head is that evoked by the
quote from The New York Times. That “grand experiment” we call the
“public domain” is over? When I can make light of it, I think, “Honey,
I shrunk the Constitution.” But I can rarely make light of it. We had in
our Constitution a commitment to free culture. In the case that I fathered, the Supreme Court effectively renounced that commitment. A
better lawyer would have made them see differently.

The day Eldred was decided, fate would have it that I was to travel to
Washington, D.C. (The day the rehearing petition in Eldred was denied—meaning the case was really finally over—fate would have it that
I was giving a speech to technologists at Disney World.) This was a
particularly long flight to my least favorite city. The drive into the city
from Dulles was delayed because of traffic, so I opened up my computer and wrote an op-ed piece.
It was an act of contrition. During the whole of the flight from San
Francisco to Washington, I had heard over and over again in my head
the same advice from Don Ayer: You need to make them see why it is
important. And alternating with that command was the question of
Justice Kennedy: “For all these years the act has impeded progress in
science and the useful arts. I just don’t see any empirical evidence for
that.” And so, having failed in the argument of constitutional principle,
finally, I turned to an argument of politics.
The New York Times published the piece. In it, I proposed a simple
fix: Fifty years after a work has been published, the copyright owner
248

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 249

would be required to register the work and pay a small fee. If he paid
the fee, he got the benefit of the full term of copyright. If he did not,
the work passed into the public domain.
We called this the Eldred Act, but that was just to give it a name.
Eric Eldred was kind enough to let his name be used once again, but as
he said early on, it won’t get passed unless it has another name.
Or another two names. For depending upon your perspective, this
is either the “Public Domain Enhancement Act” or the “Copyright
Term Deregulation Act.” Either way, the essence of the idea is clear
and obvious: Remove copyright where it is doing nothing except
blocking access and the spread of knowledge. Leave it for as long as
Congress allows for those works where its worth is at least $1. But for
everything else, let the content go.
The reaction to this idea was amazingly strong. Steve Forbes endorsed it in an editorial. I received an avalanche of e-mail and letters
expressing support. When you focus the issue on lost creativity, people
can see the copyright system makes no sense. As a good Republican
might say, here government regulation is simply getting in the way of
innovation and creativity. And as a good Democrat might say, here the
government is blocking access and the spread of knowledge for no
good reason. Indeed, there is no real difference between Democrats
and Republicans on this issue. Anyone can recognize the stupid harm
of the present system.
Indeed, many recognized the obvious benefit of the registration requirement. For one of the hardest things about the current system for
people who want to license content is that there is no obvious place to
look for the current copyright owners. Since registration is not required, since marking content is not required, since no formality at all
is required, it is often impossibly hard to locate copyright owners to ask
permission to use or license their work. This system would lower these
costs, by establishing at least one registry where copyright owners
could be identified.
As I described in chapter 10, formalities in copyright law were reBALANCES 249

moved in 1976, when Congress followed the Europeans by abandoning any formal requirement before a copyright is granted.1 The Europeans are said to view copyright as a “natural right.” Natural rights
don’t need forms to exist. Traditions, like the Anglo-American tradition that required copyright owners to follow form if their rights were
to be protected, did not, the Europeans thought, properly respect the
dignity of the author. My right as a creator turns on my creativity, not
upon the special favor of the government.
That’s great rhetoric. It sounds wonderfully romantic. But it is absurd copyright policy. It is absurd especially for authors, because a
world without formalities harms the creator. The ability to spread
“Walt Disney creativity” is destroyed when there is no simple way to
know what’s protected and what’s not.
The fight against formalities achieved its first real victory in Berlin
in 1908. International copyright lawyers amended the Berne Convention in 1908, to require copyright terms of life plus fifty years, as well as
the abolition of copyright formalities. The formalities were hated because the stories of inadvertent loss were increasingly common. It was
as if a Charles Dickens character ran all copyright offices, and the failure to dot an i or cross a t resulted in the loss of widows’ only income.
These complaints were real and sensible. And the strictness of the
formalities, especially in the United States, was absurd. The law should
always have ways of forgiving innocent mistakes. There is no reason
copyright law couldn’t, as well. Rather than abandoning formalities totally, the response in Berlin should have been to embrace a more equitable system of registration.
Even that would have been resisted, however, because registration
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was still expensive. It was
also a hassle. The abolishment of formalities promised not only to save
the starving widows, but also to lighten an unnecessary regulatory burden imposed upon creators.
In addition to the practical complaint of authors in 1908, there was
a moral claim as well. There was no reason that creative property
250 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 251

should be a second-class form of property. If a carpenter builds a table,
his rights over the table don’t depend upon filing a form with the government. He has a property right over the table “naturally,” and he can
assert that right against anyone who would steal the table, whether or
not he has informed the government of his ownership of the table.
This argument is correct, but its implications are misleading. For
the argument in favor of formalities does not depend upon creative
property being second-class property. The argument in favor of formalities turns upon the special problems that creative property presents. The law of formalities responds to the special physics of creative
property, to assure that it can be efficiently and fairly spread.
No one thinks, for example, that land is second-class property just
because you have to register a deed with a court if your sale of land is
to be effective. And few would think a car is second-class property just
because you must register the car with the state and tag it with a license. In both of those cases, everyone sees that there is an important
reason to secure registration—both because it makes the markets more
efficient and because it better secures the rights of the owner. Without
a registration system for land, landowners would perpetually have to
guard their property. With registration, they can simply point the police to a deed. Without a registration system for cars, auto theft would
be much easier. With a registration system, the thief has a high burden
to sell a stolen car. A slight burden is placed on the property owner, but
those burdens produce a much better system of protection for property
generally.
It is similarly special physics that makes formalities important in
copyright law. Unlike a carpenter’s table, there’s nothing in nature that
makes it relatively obvious who might own a particular bit of creative
property. A recording of Lyle Lovett’s latest album can exist in a billion
places without anything necessarily linking it back to a particular
owner. And like a car, there’s no way to buy and sell creative property
with confidence unless there is some simple way to authenticate who is
the author and what rights he has. Simple transactions are destroyed in
BALANCES 251

a world without formalities. Complex, expensive, lawyer transactions
take their place.
This was the understanding of the problem with the Sonny Bono
Act that we tried to demonstrate to the Court. This was the part it
didn’t “get.” Because we live in a system without formalities, there is no
way easily to build upon or use culture from our past. If copyright
terms were, as Justice Story said they would be, “short,” then this
wouldn’t matter much. For fourteen years, under the framers’ system, a
work would be presumptively controlled. After fourteen years, it would
be presumptively uncontrolled.
But now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the inability to know what is protected and what is not protected becomes a
huge and obvious burden on the creative process. If the only way a library can offer an Internet exhibit about the New Deal is to hire a
lawyer to clear the rights to every image and sound, then the copyright
system is burdening creativity in a way that has never been seen before
because there are no formalities.
The Eldred Act was designed to respond to exactly this problem. If
it is worth $1 to you, then register your work and you can get the
longer term. Others will know how to contact you and, therefore, how
to get your permission if they want to use your work. And you will get
the benefit of an extended copyright term.
If it isn’t worth it to you to register to get the benefit of an extended
term, then it shouldn’t be worth it for the government to defend your
monopoly over that work either. The work should pass into the public
domain where anyone can copy it, or build archives with it, or create a
movie based on it. It should become free if it is not worth $1 to you.
Some worry about the burden on authors. Won’t the burden of registering the work mean that the $1 is really misleading? Isn’t the hassle
worth more than $1? Isn’t that the real problem with registration?
It is. The hassle is terrible. The system that exists now is awful. I
completely agree that the Copyright Office has done a terrible job (no
doubt because they are terribly funded) in enabling simple and cheap
252 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 253

registrations. Any real solution to the problem of formalities must address the real problem of governments standing at the core of any system of formalities. In this book, I offer such a solution. That solution
essentially remakes the Copyright Office. For now, assume it was
Amazon that ran the registration system. Assume it was one-click registration. The Eldred Act would propose a simple, one-click registration fifty years after a work was published. Based upon historical data,
that system would move up to 98 percent of commercial work, commercial work that no longer had a commercial life, into the public domain within fifty years. What do you think?

When Steve Forbes endorsed the idea, some in Washington began
to pay attention. Many people contacted me pointing to representatives who might be willing to introduce the Eldred Act. And I had a few
who directly suggested that they might be willing to take the first step.
One representative, Zoe Lofgren of California, went so far as to get
the bill drafted. The draft solved any problem with international law. It
imposed the simplest requirement upon copyright owners possible. In
May 2003, it looked as if the bill would be introduced. On May 16, I
posted on the Eldred Act blog, “we are close.” There was a general reaction in the blog community that something good might happen here.
But at this stage, the lobbyists began to intervene. Jack Valenti and
the MPAA general counsel came to the congresswoman’s office to
give the view of the MPAA. Aided by his lawyer, as Valenti told me,
Valenti informed the congresswoman that the MPAA would oppose
the Eldred Act. The reasons are embarrassingly thin. More importantly,
their thinness shows something clear about what this debate is really about.
The MPAA argued first that Congress had “firmly rejected the central concept in the proposed bill”—that copyrights be renewed. That
was true, but irrelevant, as Congress’s “firm rejection” had occurred
long before the Internet made subsequent uses much more likely. SecBALANCES 253

ond, they argued that the proposal would harm poor copyright owners—apparently those who could not afford the $1 fee. Third, they argued that Congress had determined that extending a copyright term
would encourage restoration work. Maybe in the case of the small percentage of work covered by copyright law that is still commercially
valuable, but again this was irrelevant, as the proposal would not cut off
the extended term unless the $1 fee was not paid. Fourth, the MPAA
argued that the bill would impose “enormous” costs, since a registration
system is not free. True enough, but those costs are certainly less than
the costs of clearing the rights for a copyright whose owner is not
known. Fifth, they worried about the risks if the copyright to a story
underlying a film were to pass into the public domain. But what risk is
that? If it is in the public domain, then the film is a valid derivative use.
Finally, the MPAA argued that existing law enabled copyright
owners to do this if they wanted. But the whole point is that there are
thousands of copyright owners who don’t even know they have a copyright to give. Whether they are free to give away their copyright or
not—a controversial claim in any case—unless they know about a
copyright, they’re not likely to.

At the beginning of this book, I told two stories about the law reacting to changes in technology. In the one, common sense prevailed.
In the other, common sense was delayed. The difference between the
two stories was the power of the opposition—the power of the side that
fought to defend the status quo. In both cases, a new technology threatened old interests. But in only one case did those interest’s have the
power to protect themselves against this new competitive threat.
I used these two cases as a way to frame the war that this book has
been about. For here, too, a new technology is forcing the law to react.
And here, too, we should ask, is the law following or resisting common
sense? If common sense supports the law, what explains this common
sense?
254 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 255

When the issue is piracy, it is right for the law to back the copyright
owners. The commercial piracy that I described is wrong and harmful,
and the law should work to eliminate it. When the issue is p2p sharing, it is easy to understand why the law backs the owners still: Much
of this sharing is wrong, even if much is harmless. When the issue is
copyright terms for the Mickey Mouses of the world, it is possible still
to understand why the law favors Hollywood: Most people don’t recognize the reasons for limiting copyright terms; it is thus still possible
to see good faith within the resistance.
But when the copyright owners oppose a proposal such as the Eldred Act, then, finally, there is an example that lays bare the naked selfinterest driving this war. This act would free an extraordinary range of
content that is otherwise unused. It wouldn’t interfere with any copyright owner’s desire to exercise continued control over his content. It
would simply liberate what Kevin Kelly calls the “Dark Content” that
fills archives around the world. So when the warriors oppose a change
like this, we should ask one simple question:
What does this industry really want?
With very little effort, the warriors could protect their content. So
the effort to block something like the Eldred Act is not really about
protecting their content. The effort to block the Eldred Act is an effort
to assure that nothing more passes into the public domain. It is another
step to assure that the public domain will never compete, that there
will be no use of content that is not commercially controlled, and that
there will be no commercial use of content that doesn’t require their
permission first.
The opposition to the Eldred Act reveals how extreme the other
side is. The most powerful and sexy and well loved of lobbies really has
as its aim not the protection of “property” but the rejection of a tradition. Their aim is not simply to protect what is theirs. Their aim is to assure that all there is is what is theirs.
It is not hard to understand why the warriors take this view. It is not
hard to see why it would benefit them if the competition of the public
BALANCES 255

domain tied to the Internet could somehow be quashed. Just as RCA
feared the competition of FM, they fear the competition of a public
domain connected to a public that now has the means to create with it
and to share its own creation.
What is hard to understand is why the public takes this view. It is
as if the law made airplanes trespassers. The MPAA stands with the
Causbys and demands that their remote and useless property rights be
respected, so that these remote and forgotten copyright holders might
block the progress of others.
All this seems to follow easily from this untroubled acceptance of
the “property” in intellectual property. Common sense supports it, and
so long as it does, the assaults will rain down upon the technologies of
the Internet. The consequence will be an increasing “permission society.” The past can be cultivated only if you can identify the owner and
gain permission to build upon his work. The future will be controlled
by this dead (and often unfindable) hand of the past.

256 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 257

CONCLUSION
There are more than 35 million people with the AIDS virus
worldwide. Twenty-five million of them live in sub-Saharan Africa.
Seventeen million have already died. Seventeen million Africans
is proportional percentage-wise to seven million Americans. More
importantly, it is seventeen million Africans.
There is no cure for AIDS, but there are drugs to slow its progression. These antiretroviral therapies are still experimental, but they have
already had a dramatic effect. In the United States, AIDS patients who
regularly take a cocktail of these drugs increase their life expectancy
by ten to twenty years. For some, the drugs make the disease almost
invisible.
These drugs are expensive. When they were first introduced in the
United States, they cost between $10,000 and $15,000 per person per
year. Today, some cost $25,000 per year. At these prices, of course, no
African nation can afford the drugs for the vast majority of its population: $15,000 is thirty times the per capita gross national product of
Zimbabwe. At these prices, the drugs are totally unavailable.1
257

These prices are not high because the ingredients of the drugs are
expensive. These prices are high because the drugs are protected by
patents. The drug companies that produced these life-saving mixes enjoy at least a twenty-year monopoly for their inventions. They use that
monopoly power to extract the most they can from the market. That
power is in turn used to keep the prices high.
There are many who are skeptical of patents, especially drug
patents. I am not. Indeed, of all the areas of research that might be supported by patents, drug research is, in my view, the clearest case where
patents are needed. The patent gives the drug company some assurance
that if it is successful in inventing a new drug to treat a disease, it will
be able to earn back its investment and more. This is socially an extremely valuable incentive. I am the last person who would argue that
the law should abolish it, at least without other changes.
But it is one thing to support patents, even drug patents. It is another thing to determine how best to deal with a crisis. And as African
leaders began to recognize the devastation that AIDS was bringing,
they started looking for ways to import HIV treatments at costs significantly below the market price.
In 1997, South Africa tried one tack. It passed a law to allow the
importation of patented medicines that had been produced or sold in
another nation’s market with the consent of the patent owner. For example, if the drug was sold in India, it could be imported into Africa
from India. This is called “parallel importation,” and it is generally permitted under international trade law and is specifically permitted
within the European Union.2
However, the United States government opposed the bill. Indeed,
more than opposed. As the International Intellectual Property Association characterized it, “The U.S. government pressured South Africa . . .
not to permit compulsory licensing or parallel imports.”3 Through the
Office of the United States Trade Representative, the government
asked South Africa to change the law—and to add pressure to that request, in 1998, the USTR listed South Africa for possible trade sanc258 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 259

tions. That same year, more than forty pharmaceutical companies began proceedings in the South African courts to challenge the government’s actions. The United States was then joined by other governments
from the EU. Their claim, and the claim of the pharmaceutical companies, was that South Africa was violating its obligations under international law by discriminating against a particular kind of patent—
pharmaceutical patents. The demand of these governments, with the
United States in the lead, was that South Africa respect these patents
as it respects any other patent, regardless of any effect on the treatment
of AIDS within South Africa.4
We should place the intervention by the United States in context.
No doubt patents are not the most important reason that Africans
don’t have access to drugs. Poverty and the total absence of an effective
health care infrastructure matter more. But whether patents are the
most important reason or not, the price of drugs has an effect on their
demand, and patents affect price. And so, whether massive or marginal, there was an effect from our government’s intervention to stop
the flow of medications into Africa.
By stopping the flow of HIV treatment into Africa, the United
States government was not saving drugs for United States citizens.
This is not like wheat (if they eat it, we can’t); instead, the flow that the
United States intervened to stop was, in effect, a flow of knowledge:
information about how to take chemicals that exist within Africa, and
turn those chemicals into drugs that would save 15 to 30 million lives.
Nor was the intervention by the United States going to protect the
profits of United States drug companies—at least, not substantially. It
was not as if these countries were in the position to buy the drugs for
the prices the drug companies were charging. Again, the Africans are
wildly too poor to afford these drugs at the offered prices. Stopping the
parallel import of these drugs would not substantially increase the sales
by U.S. companies.
Instead, the argument in favor of restricting this flow of information, which was needed to save the lives of millions, was an argument
CONCLUSION 259

about the sanctity of property.5 It was because “intellectual property”
would be violated that these drugs should not flow into Africa. It was
a principle about the importance of “intellectual property” that led
these government actors to intervene against the South African response to AIDS.
Now just step back for a moment. There will be a time thirty years
from now when our children look back at us and ask, how could we have
let this happen? How could we allow a policy to be pursued whose direct cost would be to speed the death of 15 to 30 million Africans, and
whose only real benefit would be to uphold the “sanctity” of an idea?
What possible justification could there ever be for a policy that results
in so many deaths? What exactly is the insanity that would allow so
many to die for such an abstraction?
Some blame the drug companies. I don’t. They are corporations.
Their managers are ordered by law to make money for the corporation.
They push a certain patent policy not because of ideals, but because it is
the policy that makes them the most money. And it only makes them the
most money because of a certain corruption within our political system—
a corruption the drug companies are certainly not responsible for.
The corruption is our own politicians’ failure of integrity. For the
drug companies would love—they say, and I believe them—to sell their
drugs as cheaply as they can to countries in Africa and elsewhere.
There are issues they’d have to resolve to make sure the drugs didn’t get
back into the United States, but those are mere problems of technology. They could be overcome.
A different problem, however, could not be overcome. This is the
fear of the grandstanding politician who would call the presidents of
the drug companies before a Senate or House hearing, and ask, “How
is it you can sell this HIV drug in Africa for only $1 a pill, but the same
drug would cost an American $1,500?” Because there is no “sound
bite” answer to that question, its effect would be to induce regulation
of prices in America. The drug companies thus avoid this spiral by
avoiding the first step. They reinforce the idea that property should be
260 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 261

sacred. They adopt a rational strategy in an irrational context, with the
unintended consequence that perhaps millions die. And that rational
strategy thus becomes framed in terms of this ideal—the sanctity of an
idea called “intellectual property.”
So when the common sense of your child confronts you, what will
you say? When the common sense of a generation finally revolts
against what we have done, how will we justify what we have done?
What is the argument?
A sensible patent policy could endorse and strongly support the
patent system without having to reach everyone everywhere in exactly
the same way. Just as a sensible copyright policy could endorse and
strongly support a copyright system without having to regulate the
spread of culture perfectly and forever, a sensible patent policy could
endorse and strongly support a patent system without having to block
the spread of drugs to a country not rich enough to afford market
prices in any case. A sensible policy, in other words, could be a balanced
policy. For most of our history, both copyright and patent policies were
balanced in just this sense.
But we as a culture have lost this sense of balance. We have lost the
critical eye that helps us see the difference between truth and extremism. A certain property fundamentalism, having no connection to our
tradition, now reigns in this culture—bizarrely, and with consequences
more grave to the spread of ideas and culture than almost any other
single policy decision that we as a democracy will make.

A simple idea blinds us, and under the cover of darkness, much
happens that most of us would reject if any of us looked. So uncritically
do we accept the idea of property in ideas that we don’t even notice
how monstrous it is to deny ideas to a people who are dying without
them. So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in culture that
we don’t even question when the control of that property removes our
ability, as a people, to develop our culture democratically. Blindness beCONCLUSION 261

comes our common sense. And the challenge for anyone who would
reclaim the right to cultivate our culture is to find a way to make this
common sense open its eyes.
So far, common sense sleeps. There is no revolt. Common sense
does not yet see what there could be to revolt about. The extremism
that now dominates this debate fits with ideas that seem natural, and
that fit is reinforced by the RCAs of our day. They wage a frantic war
to fight “piracy,” and devastate a culture for creativity. They defend
the idea of “creative property,” while transforming real creators into
modern-day sharecroppers. They are insulted by the idea that rights
should be balanced, even though each of the major players in this
content war was itself a beneficiary of a more balanced ideal. The
hypocrisy reeks. Yet in a city like Washington, hypocrisy is not even
noticed. Powerful lobbies, complex issues, and MTV attention spans
produce the “perfect storm” for free culture.

In August 2003, a fight broke out in the United States about a
decision by the World Intellectual Property Organization to cancel a
meeting.6 At the request of a wide range of interests, WIPO had decided to hold a meeting to discuss “open and collaborative projects to
create public goods.” These are projects that have been successful in
producing public goods without relying exclusively upon a proprietary
use of intellectual property. Examples include the Internet and the
World Wide Web, both of which were developed on the basis of protocols in the public domain. It included an emerging trend to support
open academic journals, including the Public Library of Science project that I describe in the Afterword. It included a project to develop
single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are thought to have
great significance in biomedical research. (That nonprofit project comprised a consortium of the Wellcome Trust and pharmaceutical and
technological companies, including Amersham Biosciences, AstraZeneca,

262 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 263

Aventis, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Hoffmann-La Roche, GlaxoSmithKline, IBM, Motorola, Novartis, Pfizer, and Searle.) It included
the Global Positioning System, which Ronald Reagan set free in the
early 1980s. And it included “open source and free software.”
The aim of the meeting was to consider this wide range of projects
from one common perspective: that none of these projects relied upon
intellectual property extremism. Instead, in all of them, intellectual
property was balanced by agreements to keep access open or to impose
limitations on the way in which proprietary claims might be used.
From the perspective of this book, then, the conference was ideal.7
The projects within its scope included both commercial and noncommercial work. They primarily involved science, but from many perspectives. And WIPO was an ideal venue for this discussion, since
WIPO is the preeminent international body dealing with intellectual
property issues.
Indeed, I was once publicly scolded for not recognizing this fact
about WIPO. In February 2003, I delivered a keynote address to a
preparatory conference for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). At a press conference before the address, I was asked
what I would say. I responded that I would be talking a little about the
importance of balance in intellectual property for the development of
an information society. The moderator for the event then promptly interrupted to inform me and the assembled reporters that no question
about intellectual property would be discussed by WSIS, since those
questions were the exclusive domain of WIPO. In the talk that I had
prepared, I had actually made the issue of intellectual property relatively minor. But after this astonishing statement, I made intellectual
property the sole focus of my talk. There was no way to talk about an
“Information Society” unless one also talked about the range of information and culture that would be free. My talk did not make my immoderate moderator very happy. And she was no doubt correct that the
scope of intellectual property protections was ordinarily the stuff of

WIPO. But in my view, there couldn’t be too much of a conversation
about how much intellectual property is needed, since in my view, the
very idea of balance in intellectual property had been lost.
So whether or not WSIS can discuss balance in intellectual property, I had thought it was taken for granted that WIPO could and
should. And thus the meeting about “open and collaborative projects to
create public goods” seemed perfectly appropriate within the WIPO
agenda.
But there is one project within that list that is highly controversial,
at least among lobbyists. That project is “open source and free software.” Microsoft in particular is wary of discussion of the subject. From
its perspective, a conference to discuss open source and free software
would be like a conference to discuss Apple’s operating system. Both
open source and free software compete with Microsoft’s software. And
internationally, many governments have begun to explore requirements
that they use open source or free software, rather than “proprietary
software,” for their own internal uses.
I don’t mean to enter that debate here. It is important only to make
clear that the distinction is not between commercial and noncommercial software. There are many important companies that depend fundamentally upon open source and free software, IBM being the most
prominent. IBM is increasingly shifting its focus to the GNU/Linux
operating system, the most famous bit of “free software”—and IBM is
emphatically a commercial entity. Thus, to support “open source and
free software” is not to oppose commercial entities. It is, instead, to
support a mode of software development that is different from Microsoft’s.8
More important for our purposes, to support “open source and free
software” is not to oppose copyright. “Open source and free software” is not software in the public domain. Instead, like Microsoft’s
software, the copyright owners of free and open source software insist
quite strongly that the terms of their software license be respected by

264 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 265

adopters of free and open source software. The terms of that license are
no doubt different from the terms of a proprietary software license.
Free software licensed under the General Public License (GPL), for
example, requires that the source code for the software be made available by anyone who modifies and redistributes the software. But that
requirement is effective only if copyright governs software. If copyright
did not govern software, then free software could not impose the same
kind of requirements on its adopters. It thus depends upon copyright
law just as Microsoft does.
It is therefore understandable that as a proprietary software developer, Microsoft would oppose this WIPO meeting, and understandable that it would use its lobbyists to get the United States government
to oppose it, as well. And indeed, that is just what was reported to have
happened. According to Jonathan Krim of the Washington Post, Microsoft’s lobbyists succeeded in getting the United States government
to veto the meeting.9 And without U.S. backing, the meeting was canceled.
I don’t blame Microsoft for doing what it can to advance its own interests, consistent with the law. And lobbying governments is plainly
consistent with the law. There was nothing surprising about its lobbying here, and nothing terribly surprising about the most powerful software producer in the United States having succeeded in its lobbying
efforts.
What was surprising was the United States government’s reason for
opposing the meeting. Again, as reported by Krim, Lois Boland, acting
director of international relations for the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office, explained that “open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO, which is to promote intellectual-property rights.” She
is quoted as saying, “To hold a meeting which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such rights seems to us to be contrary to the goals of
WIPO.”
These statements are astonishing on a number of levels.

First, they are just flat wrong. As I described, most open source and
free software relies fundamentally upon the intellectual property right
called “copyright.” Without it, restrictions imposed by those licenses
wouldn’t work. Thus, to say it “runs counter” to the mission of promoting intellectual property rights reveals an extraordinary gap in understanding—the sort of mistake that is excusable in a first-year law
student, but an embarrassment from a high government official dealing with intellectual property issues.
Second, who ever said that WIPO’s exclusive aim was to “promote”
intellectual property maximally? As I had been scolded at the preparatory conference of WSIS, WIPO is to consider not only how best to
protect intellectual property, but also what the best balance of intellectual property is. As every economist and lawyer knows, the hard question in intellectual property law is to find that balance. But that there
should be limits is, I had thought, uncontested. One wants to ask Ms.
Boland, are generic drugs (drugs based on drugs whose patent has
expired) contrary to the WIPO mission? Does the public domain
weaken intellectual property? Would it have been better if the protocols of the Internet had been patented?
Third, even if one believed that the purpose of WIPO was to maximize intellectual property rights, in our tradition, intellectual property
rights are held by individuals and corporations. They get to decide
what to do with those rights because, again, they are their rights. If they
want to “waive” or “disclaim” their rights, that is, within our tradition,
totally appropriate. When Bill Gates gives away more than $20 billion
to do good in the world, that is not inconsistent with the objectives of
the property system. That is, on the contrary, just what a property system is supposed to be about: giving individuals the right to decide what
to do with their property.
When Ms. Boland says that there is something wrong with a meeting “which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such rights,” she’s
saying that WIPO has an interest in interfering with the choices of

266 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 267

the individuals who own intellectual property rights. That somehow,
WIPO’s objective should be to stop an individual from “waiving” or “disclaiming” an intellectual property right. That the interest of WIPO is
not just that intellectual property rights be maximized, but that they also
should be exercised in the most extreme and restrictive way possible.
There is a history of just such a property system that is well known
in the Anglo-American tradition. It is called “feudalism.” Under feudalism, not only was property held by a relatively small number of individuals and entities. And not only were the rights that ran with that
property powerful and extensive. But the feudal system had a strong
interest in assuring that property holders within that system not
weaken feudalism by liberating people or property within their control
to the free market. Feudalism depended upon maximum control and
concentration. It fought any freedom that might interfere with that
control.
As Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite relate, this is precisely the
choice we are now making about intellectual property.10 We will have
an information society. That much is certain. Our only choice now is
whether that information society will be free or feudal. The trend is toward the feudal.
When this battle broke, I blogged it. A spirited debate within the
comment section ensued. Ms. Boland had a number of supporters who
tried to show why her comments made sense. But there was one comment that was particularly depressing for me. An anonymous poster
wrote,
George, you misunderstand Lessig: He’s only talking about the
world as it should be (“the goal of WIPO, and the goal of any
government, should be to promote the right balance of intellectualproperty rights, not simply to promote intellectual property
rights”), not as it is. If we were talking about the world as it is,
then of course Boland didn’t say anything wrong. But in the world

as Lessig would have it, then of course she did. Always pay attention to the distinction between Lessig’s world and ours.

I missed the irony the first time I read it. I read it quickly and
thought the poster was supporting the idea that seeking balance was
what our government should be doing. (Of course, my criticism of Ms.
Boland was not about whether she was seeking balance or not; my
criticism was that her comments betrayed a first-year law student’s
mistake. I have no illusion about the extremism of our government,
whether Republican or Democrat. My only illusion apparently is about
whether our government should speak the truth or not.)
Obviously, however, the poster was not supporting that idea. Instead, the poster was ridiculing the very idea that in the real world, the
“goal” of a government should be “to promote the right balance” of intellectual property. That was obviously silly to him. And it obviously
betrayed, he believed, my own silly utopianism. “Typical for an academic,” the poster might well have continued.
I understand criticism of academic utopianism. I think utopianism
is silly, too, and I’d be the first to poke fun at the absurdly unrealistic
ideals of academics throughout history (and not just in our own country’s history).
But when it has become silly to suppose that the role of our government should be to “seek balance,” then count me with the silly, for
that means that this has become quite serious indeed. If it should be
obvious to everyone that the government does not seek balance, that
the government is simply the tool of the most powerful lobbyists, that
the idea of holding the government to a different standard is absurd,
that the idea of demanding of the government that it speak truth and
not lies is just naïve, then who have we, the most powerful democracy
in the world, become?
It might be crazy to expect a high government official to speak
the truth. It might be crazy to believe that government policy will be
something more than the handmaiden of the most powerful interests.
268 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 269

It might be crazy to argue that we should preserve a tradition that has
been part of our tradition for most of our history—free culture.
If this is crazy, then let there be more crazies. Soon.

There are moments of hope in this struggle. And moments that
surprise. When the FCC was considering relaxing ownership rules,
which would thereby further increase the concentration in media ownership, an extraordinary bipartisan coalition formed to fight this
change. For perhaps the first time in history, interests as diverse as the
NRA, the ACLU, Moveon.org, William Safire, Ted Turner, and
CodePink Women for Peace organized to oppose this change in FCC
policy. An astonishing 700,000 letters were sent to the FCC, demanding more hearings and a different result.
This activism did not stop the FCC, but soon after, a broad coalition in the Senate voted to reverse the FCC decision. The hostile hearings leading up to that vote revealed just how powerful this movement
had become. There was no substantial support for the FCC’s decision,
and there was broad and sustained support for fighting further concentration in the media.
But even this movement misses an important piece of the puzzle.
Largeness as such is not bad. Freedom is not threatened just because
some become very rich, or because there are only a handful of big players. The poor quality of Big Macs or Quarter Pounders does not mean
that you can’t get a good hamburger from somewhere else.
The danger in media concentration comes not from the concentration, but instead from the feudalism that this concentration, tied to the
change in copyright, produces. It is not just that there are a few powerful companies that control an ever expanding slice of the media. It
is that this concentration can call upon an equally bloated range of
rights—property rights of a historically extreme form—that makes
their bigness bad.
It is therefore significant that so many would rally to demand comCONCLUSION 269

petition and increased diversity. Still, if the rally is understood as being
about bigness alone, it is not terribly surprising. We Americans have a
long history of fighting “big,” wisely or not. That we could be motivated to fight “big” again is not something new.
It would be something new, and something very important, if an
equal number could be rallied to fight the increasing extremism built
within the idea of “intellectual property.” Not because balance is alien
to our tradition; indeed, as I’ve argued, balance is our tradition. But because the muscle to think critically about the scope of anything called
“property” is not well exercised within this tradition anymore.
If we were Achilles, this would be our heel. This would be the place
of our tragedy.

As I write these final words, the news is filled with stories about
the RIAA lawsuits against almost three hundred individuals.11 Eminem has just been sued for “sampling” someone else’s music.12 The
story about Bob Dylan “stealing” from a Japanese author has just finished making the rounds.13 An insider from Hollywood—who insists
he must remain anonymous—reports “an amazing conversation with
these studio guys. They’ve got extraordinary [old] content that they’d
love to use but can’t because they can’t begin to clear the rights. They’ve
got scores of kids who could do amazing things with the content, but
it would take scores of lawyers to clean it first.” Congressmen are talking about deputizing computer viruses to bring down computers thought
to violate the law. Universities are threatening expulsion for kids who
use a computer to share content.
Yet on the other side of the Atlantic, the BBC has just announced
that it will build a “Creative Archive,” from which British citizens can
download BBC content, and rip, mix, and burn it.14 And in Brazil, the
culture minister, Gilberto Gil, himself a folk hero of Brazilian music,
has joined with Creative Commons to release content and free licenses
in that Latin American country.15
270 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 271

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve told a dark story. The truth is more mixed. A technology has
given us a new freedom. Slowly, some begin to understand that this
freedom need not mean anarchy. We can carry a free culture into the
twenty-first century, without artists losing and without the potential of
digital technology being destroyed. It will take some thought, and
more importantly, it will take some will to transform the RCAs of our
day into the Causbys.
Common sense must revolt. It must act to free culture. Soon, if this
potential is ever to be realized.

At least some who have read this far will agree with me that something must be done to change where we are heading. The balance of
this book maps what might be done.
I divide this map into two parts: that which anyone can do now,
and that which requires the help of lawmakers. If there is one lesson
that we can draw from the history of remaking common sense, it is that
it requires remaking how many people think about the very same issue.
That means this movement must begin in the streets. It must recruit a significant number of parents, teachers, librarians, creators, authors, musicians, filmmakers, scientistsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all to tell this story in their
own words, and to tell their neighbors why this battle is so important.
Once this movement has its effect in the streets, it has some hope of
having an effect in Washington. We are still a democracy. What people
think matters. Not as much as it should, at least when an RCA stands
opposed, but still, it matters. And thus, in the second part below, I
sketch changes that Congress could make to better secure a free culture.

US, NOW
Common sense is with the copyright warriors because the debate so
far has been framed at the extremes—as a grand either/or: either property or anarchy, either total control or artists won’t be paid. If that really is the choice, then the warriors should win.
The mistake here is the error of the excluded middle. There are extremes in this debate, but the extremes are not all that there is. There
are those who believe in maximal copyright—“All Rights Reserved”—
and those who reject copyright—“No Rights Reserved.” The “All
Rights Reserved” sorts believe that you should ask permission before
you “use” a copyrighted work in any way. The “No Rights Reserved”
sorts believe you should be able to do with content as you wish, regardless of whether you have permission or not.
When the Internet was first born, its initial architecture effectively
tilted in the “no rights reserved” direction. Content could be copied
perfectly and cheaply; rights could not easily be controlled. Thus, regardless of anyone’s desire, the effective regime of copyright under the

276 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 277

original design of the Internet was “no rights reserved.” Content was
“taken” regardless of the rights. Any rights were effectively unprotected.
This initial character produced a reaction (opposite, but not quite
equal) by copyright owners. That reaction has been the topic of this
book. Through legislation, litigation, and changes to the network’s
design, copyright holders have been able to change the essential character of the environment of the original Internet. If the original architecture made the effective default “no rights reserved,” the future
architecture will make the effective default “all rights reserved.” The architecture and law that surround the Internet’s design will increasingly
produce an environment where all use of content requires permission.
The “cut and paste” world that defines the Internet today will become
a “get permission to cut and paste” world that is a creator’s nightmare.
What’s needed is a way to say something in the middle—neither “all
rights reserved” nor “no rights reserved” but “some rights reserved”—
and thus a way to respect copyrights but enable creators to free content
as they see fit. In other words, we need a way to restore a set of freedoms that we could just take for granted before.

Rebuilding Freedoms Previously
Presumed: Examples

If you step back from the battle I’ve been describing here, you will recognize this problem from other contexts. Think about privacy. Before
the Internet, most of us didn’t have to worry much about data about
our lives that we broadcast to the world. If you walked into a bookstore
and browsed through some of the works of Karl Marx, you didn’t need
to worry about explaining your browsing habits to your neighbors or
boss. The “privacy” of your browsing habits was assured.
What made it assured?

Well, if we think in terms of the modalities I described in chapter
10, your privacy was assured because of an inefficient architecture for
gathering data and hence a market constraint (cost) on anyone who
wanted to gather that data. If you were a suspected spy for North Korea, working for the CIA, no doubt your privacy would not be assured.
But that’s because the CIA would (we hope) find it valuable enough to
spend the thousands required to track you. But for most of us (again,
we can hope), spying doesn’t pay. The highly inefficient architecture of
real space means we all enjoy a fairly robust amount of privacy. That
privacy is guaranteed to us by friction. Not by law (there is no law protecting “privacy” in public places), and in many places, not by norms
(snooping and gossip are just fun), but instead, by the costs that friction imposes on anyone who would want to spy.
Enter the Internet, where the cost of tracking browsing in particular has become quite tiny. If you’re a customer at Amazon, then as you
browse the pages, Amazon collects the data about what you’ve looked
at. You know this because at the side of the page, there’s a list of “recently viewed” pages. Now, because of the architecture of the Net and
the function of cookies on the Net, it is easier to collect the data than
not. The friction has disappeared, and hence any “privacy” protected by
the friction disappears, too.
Amazon, of course, is not the problem. But we might begin to
worry about libraries. If you’re one of those crazy lefties who thinks that
people should have the “right” to browse in a library without the government knowing which books you look at (I’m one of those lefties,
too), then this change in the technology of monitoring might concern
you. If it becomes simple to gather and sort who does what in electronic
spaces, then the friction-induced privacy of yesterday disappears.
It is this reality that explains the push of many to define “privacy”
on the Internet. It is the recognition that technology can remove what
friction before gave us that leads many to push for laws to do what friction did.1 And whether you’re in favor of those laws or not, it is the pattern that is important here. We must take affirmative steps to secure a
278 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 279

kind of freedom that was passively provided before. A change in technology now forces those who believe in privacy to affirmatively act
where, before, privacy was given by default.
A similar story could be told about the birth of the free software
movement. When computers with software were first made available
commercially, the software—both the source code and the binaries—
was free. You couldn’t run a program written for a Data General machine on an IBM machine, so Data General and IBM didn’t care much
about controlling their software.
That was the world Richard Stallman was born into, and while he
was a researcher at MIT, he grew to love the community that developed when one was free to explore and tinker with the software that
ran on machines. Being a smart sort himself, and a talented programmer, Stallman grew to depend upon the freedom to add to or modify
other people’s work.
In an academic setting, at least, that’s not a terribly radical idea. In
a math department, anyone would be free to tinker with a proof that
someone offered. If you thought you had a better way to prove a theorem, you could take what someone else did and change it. In a classics
department, if you believed a colleague’s translation of a recently discovered text was flawed, you were free to improve it. Thus, to Stallman,
it seemed obvious that you should be free to tinker with and improve
the code that ran a machine. This, too, was knowledge. Why shouldn’t
it be open for criticism like anything else?
No one answered that question. Instead, the architecture of revenue
for computing changed. As it became possible to import programs
from one system to another, it became economically attractive (at least
in the view of some) to hide the code of your program. So, too, as companies started selling peripherals for mainframe systems. If I could just
take your printer driver and copy it, then that would make it easier for
me to sell a printer to the market than it was for you.
Thus, the practice of proprietary code began to spread, and by the
early 1980s, Stallman found himself surrounded by proprietary code.
AFTERWORD 279

The world of free software had been erased by a change in the economics of computing. And as he believed, if he did nothing about it,
then the freedom to change and share software would be fundamentally weakened.
Therefore, in 1984, Stallman began a project to build a free operating system, so that at least a strain of free software would survive. That
was the birth of the GNU project, into which Linus Torvalds’s “Linux”
kernel was added to produce the GNU/Linux operating system.
Stallman’s technique was to use copyright law to build a world of
software that must be kept free. Software licensed under the Free Software Foundation’s GPL cannot be modified and distributed unless the
source code for that software is made available as well. Thus, anyone
building upon GPL’d software would have to make their buildings free
as well. This would assure, Stallman believed, that an ecology of code
would develop that remained free for others to build upon. His fundamental goal was freedom; innovative creative code was a byproduct.
Stallman was thus doing for software what privacy advocates now
do for privacy. He was seeking a way to rebuild a kind of freedom that
was taken for granted before. Through the affirmative use of licenses
that bind copyrighted code, Stallman was affirmatively reclaiming a
space where free software would survive. He was actively protecting
what before had been passively guaranteed.
Finally, consider a very recent example that more directly resonates
with the story of this book. This is the shift in the way academic and
scientific journals are produced.
As digital technologies develop, it is becoming obvious to many
that printing thousands of copies of journals every month and sending
them to libraries is perhaps not the most efficient way to distribute
knowledge. Instead, journals are increasingly becoming electronic, and
libraries and their users are given access to these electronic journals
through password-protected sites. Something similar to this has been
happening in law for almost thirty years: Lexis and Westlaw have had
electronic versions of case reports available to subscribers to their ser280 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 281

vice. Although a Supreme Court opinion is not copyrighted, and anyone is free to go to a library and read it, Lexis and Westlaw are also free
to charge users for the privilege of gaining access to that Supreme
Court opinion through their respective services.
Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nothing wrong in general with this, and indeed, the ability
to charge for access to even public domain materials is a good incentive
for people to develop new and innovative ways to spread knowledge.
The law has agreed, which is why Lexis and Westlaw have been allowed to flourish. And if thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nothing wrong with selling the public
domain, then there could be nothing wrong, in principle, with selling
access to material that is not in the public domain.
But what if the only way to get access to social and scientific data
was through proprietary services? What if no one had the ability to
browse this data except by paying for a subscription?
As many are beginning to notice, this is increasingly the reality with
scientific journals. When these journals were distributed in paper form,
libraries could make the journals available to anyone who had access to
the library. Thus, patients with cancer could become cancer experts because the library gave them access. Or patients trying to understand
the risks of a certain treatment could research those risks by reading all
available articles about that treatment. This freedom was therefore a
function of the institution of libraries (norms) and the technology of
paper journals (architecture)â&#x20AC;&#x201D;namely, that it was very hard to control
access to a paper journal.
As journals become electronic, however, the publishers are demanding that libraries not give the general public access to the journals. This
means that the freedoms provided by print journals in public libraries
begin to disappear. Thus, as with privacy and with software, a changing
technology and market shrink a freedom taken for granted before.
This shrinking freedom has led many to take affirmative steps to
restore the freedom that has been lost. The Public Library of Science
(PLoS), for example, is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making
scientific research available to anyone with a Web connection. Authors
AFTERWORD 281

of scientific work submit that work to the Public Library of Science.
That work is then subject to peer review. If accepted, the work is then
deposited in a public, electronic archive and made permanently available for free. PLoS also sells a print version of its work, but the copyright for the print journal does not inhibit the right of anyone to
redistribute the work for free.
This is one of many such efforts to restore a freedom taken for
granted before, but now threatened by changing technology and markets. There’s no doubt that this alternative competes with the traditional publishers and their efforts to make money from the exclusive
distribution of content. But competition in our tradition is presumptively a good—especially when it helps spread knowledge and science.

Rebuilding Free Culture: One Idea

The same strategy could be applied to culture, as a response to the increasing control effected through law and technology.
Enter the Creative Commons. The Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation established in Massachusetts, but with its home at
Stanford University. Its aim is to build a layer of reasonable copyright
on top of the extremes that now reign. It does this by making it easy for
people to build upon other people’s work, by making it simple for creators to express the freedom for others to take and build upon their
work. Simple tags, tied to human-readable descriptions, tied to bulletproof licenses, make this possible.
Simple—which means without a middleman, or without a lawyer.
By developing a free set of licenses that people can attach to their
content, Creative Commons aims to mark a range of content that
can easily, and reliably, be built upon. These tags are then linked to
machine-readable versions of the license that enable computers automatically to identify content that can easily be shared. These three ex-

282 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 283

pressions together—a legal license, a human-readable description, and
machine-readable tags—constitute a Creative Commons license. A
Creative Commons license constitutes a grant of freedom to anyone
who accesses the license, and more importantly, an expression of the
ideal that the person associated with the license believes in something
different than the “All” or “No” extremes. Content is marked with the
CC mark, which does not mean that copyright is waived, but that certain freedoms are given.
These freedoms are beyond the freedoms promised by fair use. Their
precise contours depend upon the choices the creator makes. The creator can choose a license that permits any use, so long as attribution is
given. She can choose a license that permits only noncommercial use.
She can choose a license that permits any use so long as the same freedoms are given to other uses (“share and share alike”). Or any use so
long as no derivative use is made. Or any use at all within developing
nations. Or any sampling use, so long as full copies are not made. Or
lastly, any educational use.
These choices thus establish a range of freedoms beyond the default
of copyright law. They also enable freedoms that go beyond traditional
fair use. And most importantly, they express these freedoms in a way
that subsequent users can use and rely upon without the need to hire a
lawyer. Creative Commons thus aims to build a layer of content, governed by a layer of reasonable copyright law, that others can build
upon. Voluntary choice of individuals and creators will make this content available. And that content will in turn enable us to rebuild a public domain.
This is just one project among many within the Creative Commons. And of course, Creative Commons is not the only organization
pursuing such freedoms. But the point that distinguishes the Creative
Commons from many is that we are not interested only in talking
about a public domain or in getting legislators to help build a public
domain. Our aim is to build a movement of consumers and producers

of content (“content conducers,” as attorney Mia Garlick calls them)
who help build the public domain and, by their work, demonstrate the
importance of the public domain to other creativity.
The aim is not to fight the “All Rights Reserved” sorts. The aim is
to complement them. The problems that the law creates for us as a culture are produced by insane and unintended consequences of laws
written centuries ago, applied to a technology that only Jefferson could
have imagined. The rules may well have made sense against a background of technologies from centuries ago, but they do not make sense
against the background of digital technologies. New rules—with different freedoms, expressed in ways so that humans without lawyers can
use them—are needed. Creative Commons gives people a way effectively to begin to build those rules.
Why would creators participate in giving up total control? Some
participate to better spread their content. Cory Doctorow, for example,
is a science fiction author. His first novel, Down and Out in the Magic
Kingdom, was released on-line and for free, under a Creative Commons license, on the same day that it went on sale in bookstores.
Why would a publisher ever agree to this? I suspect his publisher
reasoned like this: There are two groups of people out there: (1) those
who will buy Cory’s book whether or not it’s on the Internet, and (2)
those who may never hear of Cory’s book, if it isn’t made available for
free on the Internet. Some part of (1) will download Cory’s book instead of buying it. Call them bad-(1)s. Some part of (2) will download
Cory’s book, like it, and then decide to buy it. Call them (2)-goods.
If there are more (2)-goods than bad-(1)s, the strategy of releasing
Cory’s book free on-line will probably increase sales of Cory’s book.
Indeed, the experience of his publisher clearly supports that conclusion. The book’s first printing was exhausted months before the
publisher had expected. This first novel of a science fiction author was
a total success.
The idea that free content might increase the value of nonfree content was confirmed by the experience of another author. Peter Wayner,
284 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 285

who wrote a book about the free software movement titled Free for All,
made an electronic version of his book free on-line under a Creative
Commons license after the book went out of print. He then monitored
used book store prices for the book. As predicted, as the number of
downloads increased, the used book price for his book increased, as
well.
These are examples of using the Commons to better spread proprietary content. I believe that is a wonderful and common use of the
Commons. There are others who use Creative Commons licenses for
other reasons. Many who use the “sampling license” do so because anything else would be hypocritical. The sampling license says that others
are free, for commercial or noncommercial purposes, to sample content
from the licensed work; they are just not free to make full copies of the
licensed work available to others. This is consistent with their own
art—they, too, sample from others. Because the legal costs of sampling
are so high (Walter Leaphart, manager of the rap group Public Enemy,
which was born sampling the music of others, has stated that he does
not “allow” Public Enemy to sample anymore, because the legal costs
are so high2), these artists release into the creative environment content
that others can build upon, so that their form of creativity might grow.
Finally, there are many who mark their content with a Creative
Commons license just because they want to express to others the importance of balance in this debate. If you just go along with the system
as it is, you are effectively saying you believe in the “All Rights Reserved”
model. Good for you, but many do not. Many believe that however appropriate that rule is for Hollywood and freaks, it is not an appropriate
description of how most creators view the rights associated with their
content. The Creative Commons license expresses this notion of “Some
Rights Reserved,” and gives many the chance to say it to others.
In the first six months of the Creative Commons experiment, over
1 million objects were licensed with these free-culture licenses. The next
step is partnerships with middleware content providers to help them
build into their technologies simple ways for users to mark their content
AFTERWORD 285

with Creative Commons freedoms. Then the next step is to watch and
celebrate creators who build content based upon content set free.
These are first steps to rebuilding a public domain. They are not
mere arguments; they are action. Building a public domain is the first
step to showing people how important that domain is to creativity and
innovation. Creative Commons relies upon voluntary steps to achieve
this rebuilding. They will lead to a world in which more than voluntary
steps are possible.
Creative Commons is just one example of voluntary efforts by individuals and creators to change the mix of rights that now govern the
creative field. The project does not compete with copyright; it complements it. Its aim is not to defeat the rights of authors, but to make it
easier for authors and creators to exercise their rights more flexibly and
cheaply. That difference, we believe, will enable creativity to spread
more easily.

286 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 287

THEM, SOON
We will not reclaim a free culture by individual action alone. It will
also take important reforms of laws. We have a long way to go before
the politicians will listen to these ideas and implement these reforms.
But that also means that we have time to build awareness around the
changes that we need.
In this chapter, I outline five kinds of changes: four that are general,
and one thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s specific to the most heated battle of the day, music. Each
is a step, not an end. But any of these steps would carry us a long way
to our end.

1. More Formalities

If you buy a house, you have to record the sale in a deed. If you buy land
upon which to build a house, you have to record the purchase in a deed.
If you buy a car, you get a bill of sale and register the car. If you buy an
airplane ticket, it has your name on it.
287

These are all formalities associated with property. They are requirements that we all must bear if we want our property to be protected.
In contrast, under current copyright law, you automatically get a
copyright, regardless of whether you comply with any formality. You
don’t have to register. You don’t even have to mark your content. The
default is control, and “formalities” are banished.
Why?
As I suggested in chapter 10, the motivation to abolish formalities
was a good one. In the world before digital technologies, formalities
imposed a burden on copyright holders without much benefit. Thus, it
was progress when the law relaxed the formal requirements that a
copyright owner must bear to protect and secure his work. Those formalities were getting in the way.
But the Internet changes all this. Formalities today need not be a
burden. Rather, the world without formalities is the world that burdens creativity. Today, there is no simple way to know who owns what,
or with whom one must deal in order to use or build upon the creative work of others. There are no records, there is no system to trace—
there is no simple way to know how to get permission. Yet given the
massive increase in the scope of copyright’s rule, getting permission is
a necessary step for any work that builds upon our past. And thus, the
lack of formalities forces many into silence where they otherwise could
speak.
The law should therefore change this requirement1—but it should
not change it by going back to the old, broken system. We should require formalities, but we should establish a system that will create the
incentives to minimize the burden of these formalities.
The important formalities are three: marking copyrighted work, registering copyrights, and renewing the claim to copyright. Traditionally,
the first of these three was something the copyright owner did; the second two were something the government did. But a revised system of
formalities would banish the government from the process, except for
the sole purpose of approving standards developed by others.
288 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 289

REGISTRATION AND RENEWAL

Under the old system, a copyright owner had to file a registration with
the Copyright Office to register or renew a copyright. When filing that
registration, the copyright owner paid a fee. As with most government
agencies, the Copyright Office had little incentive to minimize the
burden of registration; it also had little incentive to minimize the fee.
And as the Copyright Office is not a main target of government policymaking, the office has historically been terribly underfunded. Thus,
when people who know something about the process hear this idea
about formalities, their first reaction is panicâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;nothing could be worse
than forcing people to deal with the mess that is the Copyright Office.
Yet it is always astonishing to me that we, who come from a tradition of extraordinary innovation in governmental design, can no longer
think innovatively about how governmental functions can be designed.
Just because there is a public purpose to a government role, it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t
follow that the government must actually administer the role. Instead,
we should be creating incentives for private parties to serve the public,
subject to standards that the government sets.
In the context of registration, one obvious model is the Internet.
There are at least 32 million Web sites registered around the world.
Domain name owners for these Web sites have to pay a fee to keep their
registration alive. In the main top-level domains (.com, .org, .net),
there is a central registry. The actual registrations are, however, performed by many competing registrars. That competition drives the cost
of registering down, and more importantly, it drives the ease with which
registration occurs up.
We should adopt a similar model for the registration and renewal of
copyrights. The Copyright Office may well serve as the central registry,
but it should not be in the registrar business. Instead, it should establish a database, and a set of standards for registrars. It should approve
registrars that meet its standards. Those registrars would then compete
with one another to deliver the cheapest and simplest systems for registering and renewing copyrights. That competition would substanAFTERWORD 289

tially lower the burden of this formality—while producing a database
of registrations that would facilitate the licensing of content.

MARKING

It used to be that the failure to include a copyright notice on a creative
work meant that the copyright was forfeited. That was a harsh punishment for failing to comply with a regulatory rule—akin to imposing
the death penalty for a parking ticket in the world of creative rights.
Here again, there is no reason that a marking requirement needs to be
enforced in this way. And more importantly, there is no reason a marking requirement needs to be enforced uniformly across all media.
The aim of marking is to signal to the public that this work is copyrighted and that the author wants to enforce his rights. The mark also
makes it easy to locate a copyright owner to secure permission to use
the work.
One of the problems the copyright system confronted early on was
that different copyrighted works had to be differently marked. It wasn’t
clear how or where a statue was to be marked, or a record, or a film. A
new marking requirement could solve these problems by recognizing
the differences in media, and by allowing the system of marking to
evolve as technologies enable it to. The system could enable a special
signal from the failure to mark—not the loss of the copyright, but the
loss of the right to punish someone for failing to get permission first.
Let’s start with the last point. If a copyright owner allows his work
to be published without a copyright notice, the consequence of that
failure need not be that the copyright is lost. The consequence could
instead be that anyone has the right to use this work, until the copyright owner complains and demonstrates that it is his work and he
doesn’t give permission.2 The meaning of an unmarked work would
therefore be “use unless someone complains.” If someone does complain, then the obligation would be to stop using the work in any new

290 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 291

work from then on though no penalty would attach for existing uses.
This would create a strong incentive for copyright owners to mark
their work.
That in turn raises the question about how work should best be
marked. Here again, the system needs to adjust as the technologies
evolve. The best way to ensure that the system evolves is to limit the
Copyright Officeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role to that of approving standards for marking
content that have been crafted elsewhere.
For example, if a recording industry association devises a method
for marking CDs, it would propose that to the Copyright Office. The
Copyright Office would hold a hearing, at which other proposals could
be made. The Copyright Office would then select the proposal that it
judged preferable, and it would base that choice solely upon the consideration of which method could best be integrated into the registration
and renewal system. We would not count on the government to innovate; but we would count on the government to keep the product of innovation in line with its other important functions.
Finally, marking content clearly would simplify registration requirements. If photographs were marked by author and year, there
would be little reason not to allow a photographer to reregister, for example, all photographs taken in a particular year in one quick step. The
aim of the formality is not to burden the creator; the system itself
should be kept as simple as possible.
The objective of formalities is to make things clear. The existing
system does nothing to make things clear. Indeed, it seems designed to
make things unclear.
If formalities such as registration were reinstated, one of the most
difficult aspects of relying upon the public domain would be removed.
It would be simple to identify what content is presumptively free; it
would be simple to identify who controls the rights for a particular
kind of content; it would be simple to assert those rights, and to renew
that assertion at the appropriate time.

The term of copyright has gone from fourteen years to ninety-five
years for corporate authors, and life of the author plus seventy years for
natural authors.
In The Future of Ideas, I proposed a seventy-five-year term, granted
in five-year increments with a requirement of renewal every five years.
That seemed radical enough at the time. But after we lost Eldred v.
Ashcroft, the proposals became even more radical. The Economist endorsed a proposal for a fourteen-year copyright term.3 Others have
proposed tying the term to the term for patents.
I agree with those who believe that we need a radical change in copyright’s term. But whether fourteen years or seventy-five, there are four
principles that are important to keep in mind about copyright terms.
(1) Keep it short: The term should be as long as necessary to
give incentives to create, but no longer. If it were tied to very
strong protections for authors (so authors were able to reclaim
rights from publishers), rights to the same work (not derivative works) might be extended further. The key is not to tie the
work up with legal regulations when it no longer benefits an
author.
(2) Keep it simple: The line between the public domain and
protected content must be kept clear. Lawyers like the fuzziness of “fair use,” and the distinction between “ideas” and “expression.” That kind of law gives them lots of work. But our
framers had a simpler idea in mind: protected versus unprotected. The value of short terms is that there is little need to
build exceptions into copyright when the term itself is kept
short. A clear and active “lawyer-free zone” makes the complexities of “fair use” and “idea/expression” less necessary to
navigate.
292 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 293

(3) Keep it alive: Copyright should have to be renewed. Especially if the maximum term is long, the copyright owner
should be required to signal periodically that he wants the
protection continued. This need not be an onerous burden,
but there is no reason this monopoly protection has to be
granted for free. On average, it takes ninety minutes for a veteran to apply for a pension.4 If we make veterans suffer that
burden, I don’t see why we couldn’t require authors to spend
ten minutes every fifty years to file a single form.
(4) Keep it prospective: Whatever the term of copyright should
be, the clearest lesson that economists teach is that a term
once given should not be extended. It might have been a mistake in 1923 for the law to offer authors only a fifty-six-year
term. I don’t think so, but it’s possible. If it was a mistake, then
the consequence was that we got fewer authors to create in
1923 than we otherwise would have. But we can’t correct that
mistake today by increasing the term. No matter what we do
today, we will not increase the number of authors who wrote
in 1923. Of course, we can increase the reward that those who
write now get (or alternatively, increase the copyright burden
that smothers many works that are today invisible). But increasing their reward will not increase their creativity in 1923.
What’s not done is not done, and there’s nothing we can do
about that now.

These changes together should produce an average copyright term
that is much shorter than the current term. Until 1976, the average
term was just 32.2 years. We should be aiming for the same.
No doubt the extremists will call these ideas “radical.” (After all, I
call them “extremists.”) But again, the term I recommended was longer
than the term under Richard Nixon. How “radical” can it be to ask for
a more generous copyright law than Richard Nixon presided over?
AFTERWORD 293

As I observed at the beginning of this book, property law originally
granted property owners the right to control their property from the
ground to the heavens. The airplane came along. The scope of property
rights quickly changed. There was no fuss, no constitutional challenge.
It made no sense anymore to grant that much control, given the emergence of that new technology.
Our Constitution gives Congress the power to give authors “exclusive right” to “their writings.” Congress has given authors an exclusive
right to “their writings” plus any derivative writings (made by others) that
are sufficiently close to the author’s original work. Thus, if I write a book,
and you base a movie on that book, I have the power to deny you the
right to release that movie, even though that movie is not “my writing.”
Congress granted the beginnings of this right in 1870, when it expanded the exclusive right of copyright to include a right to control
translations and dramatizations of a work.5 The courts have expanded
it slowly through judicial interpretation ever since. This expansion has
been commented upon by one of the law’s greatest judges, Judge Benjamin Kaplan.
So inured have we become to the extension of the monopoly to a
large range of so-called derivative works, that we no longer sense
the oddity of accepting such an enlargement of copyright while
yet intoning the abracadabra of idea and expression.6

I think it’s time to recognize that there are airplanes in this field and
the expansiveness of these rights of derivative use no longer make
sense. More precisely, they don’t make sense for the period of time that
a copyright runs. And they don’t make sense as an amorphous grant.
Consider each limitation in turn.
Term: If Congress wants to grant a derivative right, then that right
should be for a much shorter term. It makes sense to protect John
294 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 295

Grisham’s right to sell the movie rights to his latest novel (or at least
I’m willing to assume it does); but it does not make sense for that right
to run for the same term as the underlying copyright. The derivative
right could be important in inducing creativity; it is not important long
after the creative work is done.
Scope: Likewise should the scope of derivative rights be narrowed.
Again, there are some cases in which derivative rights are important.
Those should be specified. But the law should draw clear lines around
regulated and unregulated uses of copyrighted material. When all
“reuse” of creative material was within the control of businesses, perhaps it made sense to require lawyers to negotiate the lines. It no longer
makes sense for lawyers to negotiate the lines. Think about all the creative possibilities that digital technologies enable; now imagine pouring molasses into the machines. That’s what this general requirement
of permission does to the creative process. Smothers it.
This was the point that Alben made when describing the making of
the Clint Eastwood CD. While it makes sense to require negotiation
for foreseeable derivative rights—turning a book into a movie, or a
poem into a musical score—it doesn’t make sense to require negotiation for the unforeseeable. Here, a statutory right would make much
more sense.
In each of these cases, the law should mark the uses that are protected, and the presumption should be that other uses are not protected. This is the reverse of the recommendation of my colleague Paul
Goldstein.7 His view is that the law should be written so that expanded
protections follow expanded uses.
Goldstein’s analysis would make perfect sense if the cost of the legal system were small. But as we are currently seeing in the context of
the Internet, the uncertainty about the scope of protection, and the incentives to protect existing architectures of revenue, combined with a
strong copyright, weaken the process of innovation.
The law could remedy this problem either by removing protection
beyond the part explicitly drawn or by granting reuse rights upon cerAFTERWORD 295

tain statutory conditions. Either way, the effect would be to free a great
deal of culture to others to cultivate. And under a statutory rights
regime, that reuse would earn artists more income.

4. Liberate the Music—Again

The battle that got this whole war going was about music, so it wouldn’t
be fair to end this book without addressing the issue that is, to most
people, most pressing—music. There is no other policy issue that better teaches the lessons of this book than the battles around the sharing
of music.
The appeal of file-sharing music was the crack cocaine of the Internet’s growth. It drove demand for access to the Internet more powerfully than any other single application. It was the Internet’s killer
app—possibly in two senses of that word. It no doubt was the application that drove demand for bandwidth. It may well be the application
that drives demand for regulations that in the end kill innovation on
the network.
The aim of copyright, with respect to content in general and music
in particular, is to create the incentives for music to be composed, performed, and, most importantly, spread. The law does this by giving
an exclusive right to a composer to control public performances of his
work, and to a performing artist to control copies of her performance.
File-sharing networks complicate this model by enabling the
spread of content for which the performer has not been paid. But of
course, that’s not all the file-sharing networks do. As I described in
chapter 5, they enable four different kinds of sharing:
A. There are some who are using sharing networks as substitutes
for purchasing CDs.
B. There are also some who are using sharing networks to sample,
on the way to purchasing CDs.
296 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 297

C. There are many who are using file-sharing networks to get access to content that is no longer sold but is still under copyright
or that would have been too cumbersome to buy off the Net.
D. There are many who are using file-sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or to get access that the
copyright owner plainly endorses.
Any reform of the law needs to keep these different uses in focus. It
must avoid burdening type D even if it aims to eliminate type A. The
eagerness with which the law aims to eliminate type A, moreover,
should depend upon the magnitude of type B. As with VCRs, if the net
effect of sharing is actually not very harmful, the need for regulation is
significantly weakened.
As I said in chapter 5, the actual harm caused by sharing is controversial. For the purposes of this chapter, however, I assume the harm is
real. I assume, in other words, that type A sharing is significantly
greater than type B, and is the dominant use of sharing networks.
Nonetheless, there is a crucial fact about the current technological
context that we must keep in mind if we are to understand how the law
should respond.
Today, file sharing is addictive. In ten years, it won’t be. It is addictive
today because it is the easiest way to gain access to a broad range of content. It won’t be the easiest way to get access to a broad range of content
in ten years. Today, access to the Internet is cumbersome and slow—we
in the United States are lucky to have broadband service at 1.5 MBs, and
very rarely do we get service at that speed both up and down. Although
wireless access is growing, most of us still get access across wires. Most
only gain access through a machine with a keyboard. The idea of the always on, always connected Internet is mainly just an idea.
But it will become a reality, and that means the way we get access to
the Internet today is a technology in transition. Policy makers should
not make policy on the basis of technology in transition. They should
make policy on the basis of where the technology is going. The quesAFTERWORD 297

tion should not be, how should the law regulate sharing in this world?
The question should be, what law will we require when the network
becomes the network it is clearly becoming? That network is one in
which every machine with electricity is essentially on the Net; where
everywhere you are—except maybe the desert or the Rockies—you can
instantaneously be connected to the Internet. Imagine the Internet as
ubiquitous as the best cell-phone service, where with the flip of a device, you are connected.
In that world, it will be extremely easy to connect to services that
give you access to content on the fly—such as Internet radio, content
that is streamed to the user when the user demands. Here, then, is the
critical point: When it is extremely easy to connect to services that give
access to content, it will be easier to connect to services that give you
access to content than it will be to download and store content on the
many devices you will have for playing content. It will be easier, in other
words, to subscribe than it will be to be a database manager, as everyone in the download-sharing world of Napster-like technologies essentially is. Content services will compete with content sharing, even if
the services charge money for the content they give access to. Already
cell-phone services in Japan offer music (for a fee) streamed over cell
phones (enhanced with plugs for headphones). The Japanese are paying for this content even though “free” content is available in the form
of MP3s across the Web.8
This point about the future is meant to suggest a perspective on the
present: It is emphatically temporary. The “problem” with file sharing—to the extent there is a real problem—is a problem that will increasingly disappear as it becomes easier to connect to the Internet.
And thus it is an extraordinary mistake for policy makers today to be
“solving” this problem in light of a technology that will be gone tomorrow. The question should not be how to regulate the Internet to
eliminate file sharing (the Net will evolve that problem away). The
question instead should be how to assure that artists get paid, during

298 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 299

this transition between twentieth-century models for doing business
and twenty-first-century technologies.
The answer begins with recognizing that there are different “problems” here to solve. Let’s start with type D content—uncopyrighted
content or copyrighted content that the artist wants shared. The “problem” with this content is to make sure that the technology that would
enable this kind of sharing is not rendered illegal. You can think of it
this way: Pay phones are used to deliver ransom demands, no doubt.
But there are many who need to use pay phones who have nothing to
do with ransoms. It would be wrong to ban pay phones in order to
eliminate kidnapping.
Type C content raises a different “problem.” This is content that was,
at one time, published and is no longer available. It may be unavailable
because the artist is no longer valuable enough for the record label he
signed with to carry his work. Or it may be unavailable because the work
is forgotten. Either way, the aim of the law should be to facilitate the access to this content, ideally in a way that returns something to the artist.
Again, the model here is the used book store. Once a book goes out
of print, it may still be available in libraries and used book stores. But
libraries and used book stores don’t pay the copyright owner when
someone reads or buys an out-of-print book. That makes total sense, of
course, since any other system would be so burdensome as to eliminate
the possibility of used book stores’ existing. But from the author’s perspective, this “sharing” of his content without his being compensated is
less than ideal.
The model of used book stores suggests that the law could simply
deem out-of-print music fair game. If the publisher does not make
copies of the music available for sale, then commercial and noncommercial providers would be free, under this rule, to “share” that content,
even though the sharing involved making a copy. The copy here would
be incidental to the trade; in a context where commercial publishing
has ended, trading music should be as free as trading books.

Alternatively, the law could create a statutory license that would ensure that artists get something from the trade of their work. For example, if the law set a low statutory rate for the commercial sharing of
content that was not offered for sale by a commercial publisher, and if
that rate were automatically transferred to a trust for the benefit of the
artist, then businesses could develop around the idea of trading this
content, and artists would benefit from this trade.
This system would also create an incentive for publishers to keep
works available commercially. Works that are available commercially
would not be subject to this license. Thus, publishers could protect
the right to charge whatever they want for content if they kept the
work commercially available. But if they don’t keep it available, and instead, the computer hard disks of fans around the world keep it alive,
then any royalty owed for such copying should be much less than the
amount owed a commercial publisher.
The hard case is content of types A and B, and again, this case is
hard only because the extent of the problem will change over time, as
the technologies for gaining access to content change. The law’s solution should be as flexible as the problem is, understanding that we are
in the middle of a radical transformation in the technology for delivering and accessing content.
So here’s a solution that will at first seem very strange to both sides
in this war, but which upon reflection, I suggest, should make some sense.
Stripped of the rhetoric about the sanctity of property, the basic
claim of the content industry is this: A new technology (the Internet)
has harmed a set of rights that secure copyright. If those rights are to
be protected, then the content industry should be compensated for that
harm. Just as the technology of tobacco harmed the health of millions
of Americans, or the technology of asbestos caused grave illness to
thousands of miners, so, too, has the technology of digital networks
harmed the interests of the content industry.
I love the Internet, and so I don’t like likening it to tobacco or as-

300 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 301

bestos. But the analogy is a fair one from the perspective of the law.
And it suggests a fair response: Rather than seeking to destroy the Internet, or the p2p technologies that are currently harming content
providers on the Internet, we should find a relatively simple way to
compensate those who are harmed.
The idea would be a modification of a proposal that has been
floated by Harvard law professor William Fisher.9 Fisher suggests a
very clever way around the current impasse of the Internet. Under his
plan, all content capable of digital transmission would (1) be marked
with a digital watermark (don’t worry about how easy it is to evade
these marks; as you’ll see, there’s no incentive to evade them). Once the
content is marked, then entrepreneurs would develop (2) systems to
monitor how many items of each content were distributed. On the basis of those numbers, then (3) artists would be compensated. The compensation would be paid for by (4) an appropriate tax.
Fisher’s proposal is careful and comprehensive. It raises a million
questions, most of which he answers well in his upcoming book,
Promises to Keep. The modification that I would make is relatively simple: Fisher imagines his proposal replacing the existing copyright system. I imagine it complementing the existing system. The aim of the
proposal would be to facilitate compensation to the extent that harm
could be shown. This compensation would be temporary, aimed at facilitating a transition between regimes. And it would require renewal
after a period of years. If it continues to make sense to facilitate free exchange of content, supported through a taxation system, then it can be
continued. If this form of protection is no longer necessary, then the
system could lapse into the old system of controlling access.
Fisher would balk at the idea of allowing the system to lapse. His
aim is not just to ensure that artists are paid, but also to ensure that the
system supports the widest range of “semiotic democracy” possible. But
the aims of semiotic democracy would be satisfied if the other changes
I described were accomplished—in particular, the limits on derivative

uses. A system that simply charges for access would not greatly burden
semiotic democracy if there were few limitations on what one was allowed to do with the content itself.
No doubt it would be difficult to calculate the proper measure of
“harm” to an industry. But the difficulty of making that calculation
would be outweighed by the benefit of facilitating innovation. This
background system to compensate would also not need to interfere
with innovative proposals such as Apple’s MusicStore. As experts predicted when Apple launched the MusicStore, it could beat “free” by being easier than free is. This has proven correct: Apple has sold millions
of songs at even the very high price of 99 cents a song. (At 99 cents, the
cost is the equivalent of a per-song CD price, though the labels have
none of the costs of a CD to pay.) Apple’s move was countered by Real
Networks, offering music at just 79 cents a song. And no doubt there
will be a great deal of competition to offer and sell music on-line.
This competition has already occurred against the background of
“free” music from p2p systems. As the sellers of cable television have
known for thirty years, and the sellers of bottled water for much more
than that, there is nothing impossible at all about “competing with
free.” Indeed, if anything, the competition spurs the competitors to offer new and better products. This is precisely what the competitive
market was to be about. Thus in Singapore, though piracy is rampant,
movie theaters are often luxurious—with “first class” seats, and meals
served while you watch a movie—as they struggle and succeed in finding ways to compete with “free.”
This regime of competition, with a backstop to assure that artists
don’t lose, would facilitate a great deal of innovation in the delivery of
content. That competition would continue to shrink type A sharing. It
would inspire an extraordinary range of new innovators—ones who
would have a right to the content, and would no longer fear the uncertain and barbarically severe punishments of the law.
In summary, then, my proposal is this:

302 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 303

The Internet is in transition. We should not be regulating a technology in transition. We should instead be regulating to minimize the
harm to interests affected by this technological change, while enabling,
and encouraging, the most efficient technology we can create.
We can minimize that harm while maximizing the benefit to innovation by
1.
2.

3.

guaranteeing the right to engage in type D sharing;
permitting noncommercial type C sharing without liability,
and commercial type C sharing at a low and fixed rate set by
statute;
while in this transition, taxing and compensating for type A
sharing, to the extent actual harm is demonstrated.

But what if “piracy” doesn’t disappear? What if there is a competitive market providing content at a low cost, but a significant number of
consumers continue to “take” content for nothing? Should the law do
something then?
Yes, it should. But, again, what it should do depends upon how the
facts develop. These changes may not eliminate type A sharing. But
the real issue is not whether it eliminates sharing in the abstract.
The real issue is its effect on the market. Is it better (a) to have a technology that is 95 percent secure and produces a market of size x, or
(b) to have a technology that is 50 percent secure but produces a market of five times x? Less secure might produce more unauthorized
sharing, but it is likely to also produce a much bigger market in authorized sharing. The most important thing is to assure artists’ compensation without breaking the Internet. Once that’s assured, then it
may well be appropriate to find ways to track down the petty pirates.
But we’re a long way away from whittling the problem down to this
subset of type A sharers. And our focus until we’re there should not be
on finding ways to break the Internet. Our focus until we’re there

should be on how to make sure the artists are paid, while protecting the
space for innovation and creativity that the Internet is.

5. Fire Lots of Lawyers

I’m a lawyer. I make lawyers for a living. I believe in the law. I believe
in the law of copyright. Indeed, I have devoted my life to working in
law, not because there are big bucks at the end but because there are
ideals at the end that I would love to live.
Yet much of this book has been a criticism of lawyers, or the role
lawyers have played in this debate. The law speaks to ideals, but it is
my view that our profession has become too attuned to the client. And
in a world where the rich clients have one strong view, the unwillingness of the profession to question or counter that one strong view queers
the law.
The evidence of this bending is compelling. I’m attacked as a “radical” by many within the profession, yet the positions that I am advocating are precisely the positions of some of the most moderate and
significant figures in the history of this branch of the law. Many, for example, thought crazy the challenge that we brought to the Copyright
Term Extension Act. Yet just thirty years ago, the dominant scholar
and practitioner in the field of copyright, Melville Nimmer, thought it
obvious.10
However, my criticism of the role that lawyers have played in this
debate is not just about a professional bias. It is more importantly
about our failure to actually reckon the costs of the law.
Economists are supposed to be good at reckoning costs and benefits. But more often than not, economists, with no clue about how the
legal system actually functions, simply assume that the transaction
costs of the legal system are slight.11 They see a system that has been
around for hundreds of years, and they assume it works the way their
elementary school civics class taught them it works.
304 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_02_175-306_r7jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:04 PM Page 305

But the legal system doesn’t work. Or more accurately, it doesn’t
work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the
system is corrupt. I don’t think our legal system (at the federal level, at
least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done.
These costs distort free culture in many ways. A lawyer’s time is
billed at the largest firms at more than $400 per hour. How much time
should such a lawyer spend reading cases carefully, or researching obscure strands of authority? The answer is the increasing reality: very little. The law depended upon the careful articulation and development
of doctrine, but the careful articulation and development of legal doctrine depends upon careful work. Yet that careful work costs too much,
except in the most high-profile and costly cases.
The costliness and clumsiness and randomness of this system mock
our tradition. And lawyers, as well as academics, should consider it
their duty to change the way the law works—or better, to change the
law so that it works. It is wrong that the system works well only for the
top 1 percent of the clients. It could be made radically more efficient,
and inexpensive, and hence radically more just.
But until that reform is complete, we as a society should keep the
law away from areas that we know it will only harm. And that is precisely what the law will too often do if too much of our culture is left
to its review.
Think about the amazing things your kid could do or make with
digital technology—the film, the music, the Web page, the blog. Or
think about the amazing things your community could facilitate with
digital technology—a wiki, a barn raising, activism to change something. Think about all those creative things, and then imagine cold
molasses poured onto the machines. This is what any regime that requires permission produces. Again, this is the reality of Brezhnev’s
Russia.
The law should regulate in certain areas of culture—but it should
regulate culture only where that regulation does good. Yet lawyers
AFTERWORD 305

rarely test their power, or the power they promote, against this simple
pragmatic question: “Will it do good?” When challenged about the expanding reach of the law, the lawyer answers, “Why not?”
We should ask, “Why?” Show me why your regulation of culture is
needed. Show me how it does good. And until you can show me both,
keep your lawyers away.

306 FREE CULTURE

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_03_307-330_r7dy.qxd 2/10/04 4:01 PM Page 307

NOTES

Throughout this text, there are references to links on the World Wide Web. As
anyone who has tried to use the Web knows, these links can be highly unstable. I
have tried to remedy the instability by redirecting readers to the original source
through the Web site associated with this book. For each link below, you can go to
http://free-culture.cc/notes and locate the original source by clicking on the
number after the # sign. If the original link remains alive, you will be redirected to
that link. If the original link has disappeared, you will be redirected to an appropriate reference for the material.
PREFACE
1. David Pogue, “Don’t Just Chat, Do Something,” New York Times, 30 January 2000.
2. Richard M. Stallman, Free Software, Free Societies 57 ( Joshua Gay, ed.
2002).
3. William Safire, “The Great Media Gulp,” New York Times, 22 May 2003.
INTRODUCTION
1. St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries 3 (South Hackensack, N.J.:
Rothman Reprints, 1969), 18.
2. United States v. Causby, U.S. 328 (1946): 256, 261. The Court did find that
there could be a “taking” if the government’s use of its land effectively destroyed the value of the Causbys’ land. This example was suggested to me
by Keith Aoki’s wonderful piece, “(Intellectual) Property and Sovereignty:
307

Notes Toward a Cultural Geography of Authorship,” Stanford Law Review 48 (1996): 1293, 1333. See also Paul Goldstein, Real Property (Mineola, N.Y.: Foundation Press, 1984), 1112–13.
Lawrence Lessing, Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lipincott Company, 1956), 209.
See “Saints: The Heroes and Geniuses of the Electronic Era,” First Electronic Church of America, at www.webstationone.com/fecha, available at
link #1.
Lessing, 226.
Lessing, 256.
Amanda Lenhart, “The Ever-Shifting Internet Population: A New Look
at Internet Access and the Digital Divide,” Pew Internet and American
Life Project, 15 April 2003: 6, available at link #2.
This is not the only purpose of copyright, though it is the overwhelmingly
primary purpose of the copyright established in the federal constitution.
State copyright law historically protected not just the commercial interest in
publication, but also a privacy interest. By granting authors the exclusive
right to first publication, state copyright law gave authors the power to
control the spread of facts about them. See Samuel D. Warren and Louis
D. Brandeis, “The Right to Privacy,” Harvard Law Review 4 (1890): 193,
198–200.
See Jessica Litman, Digital Copyright (New York: Prometheus Books,
2001), ch. 13.
Amy Harmon, “Black Hawk Download: Moving Beyond Music, Pirates
Use New Tools to Turn the Net into an Illicit Video Club,” New York
Times, 17 January 2002.
Neil W. Netanel, “Copyright and a Democratic Civil Society,” Yale Law
Journal 106 (1996): 283.

“PIRACY”
1. Bach v. Longman, 98 Eng. Rep. 1274 (1777) (Mansfield).
2. See Rochelle Dreyfuss, “Expressive Genericity: Trademarks as Language
in the Pepsi Generation,” Notre Dame Law Review 65 (1990): 397.
3. Lisa Bannon, “The Birds May Sing, but Campers Can’t Unless They Pay
Up,” Wall Street Journal, 21 August 1996, available at link #3; Jonathan
Zittrain, “Calling Off the Copyright War: In Battle of Property vs. Free
Speech, No One Wins,” Boston Globe, 24 November 2002.
4. In The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2002), Richard
Florida documents a shift in the nature of labor toward a labor of creativity. His work, however, doesn’t directly address the legal conditions under
which that creativity is enabled or stifled. I certainly agree with him about
the importance and significance of this change, but I also believe the conditions under which it will be enabled are much more tenuous.
308 NOTES

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_03_307-330_r7dy.qxd 2/10/04 4:01 PM Page 309

CHAPTER ONE: CREATORS
1. Leonard Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), 34–35.
2. I am grateful to David Gerstein and his careful history, described at link #4.
According to Dave Smith of the Disney Archives, Disney paid royalties to
use the music for five songs in Steamboat Willie: “Steamboat Bill,” “The
Simpleton” (Delille), “Mischief Makers” (Carbonara), “Joyful Hurry No. 1”
(Baron), and “Gawky Rube” (Lakay). A sixth song, “The Turkey in the
Straw,” was already in the public domain. Letter from David Smith to
Harry Surden, 10 July 2003, on file with author.
3. He was also a fan of the public domain. See Chris Sprigman, “The Mouse
that Ate the Public Domain,” Findlaw, 5 March 2002, at link #5.
4. Until 1976, copyright law granted an author the possibility of two terms: an
initial term and a renewal term. I have calculated the “average” term by determining the weighted average of total registrations for any particular year,
and the proportion renewing. Thus, if 100 copyrights are registered in year
1, and only 15 are renewed, and the renewal term is 28 years, then the average term is 32.2 years. For the renewal data and other relevant data, see the
Web site associated with this book, available at link #6.
5. For an excellent history, see Scott McCloud, Reinventing Comics (New
York: Perennial, 2000).
6. See Salil K. Mehra, “Copyright and Comics in Japan: Does Law Explain
Why All the Comics My Kid Watches Are Japanese Imports?” Rutgers Law
Review 55 (2002): 155, 182. “[T]here might be a collective economic rationality that would lead manga and anime artists to forgo bringing legal
actions for infringement. One hypothesis is that all manga artists may be
better off collectively if they set aside their individual self-interest and decide not to press their legal rights. This is essentially a prisoner’s dilemma
solved.”
7. The term intellectual property is of relatively recent origin. See Siva Vaidhyanathan, Copyrights and Copywrongs, 11 (New York: New York University Press, 2001). See also Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas (New York:
Random House, 2001), 293 n. 26. The term accurately describes a set of
“property” rights—copyright, patents, trademark, and trade-secret—but the
nature of those rights is very different.
CHAPTER TWO: “MERE COPYISTS”
1. Reese V. Jenkins, Images and Enterprise (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 112.
2. Brian Coe, The Birth of Photography (New York: Taplinger Publishing,
1977), 53.
3. Jenkins, 177.
4. Based on a chart in Jenkins, p. 178.
NOTES 309

published under a pseudonym, that dealt with some of the issues and
people he was covering.”)
22. See, for example, Edward Felten and Andrew Appel, “Technological Access Control Interferes with Noninfringing Scholarship,” Communications
of the Association for Computer Machinery 43 (2000): 9.
CHAPTER THREE: CATALOGS
1. Tim Goral, “Recording Industry Goes After Campus P-2-P Networks:
Suit Alleges $97.8 Billion in Damages,” Professional Media Group LCC 6
(2003): 5, available at 2003 WL 55179443.
2. Occupational Employment Survey, U.S. Dept. of Labor (2001)
(27–2042—Musicians and Singers). See also National Endowment for
the Arts, More Than One in a Blue Moon (2000).
3. Douglas Lichtman makes a related point in “KaZaA and Punishment,”
Wall Street Journal, 10 September 2003, A24.
CHAPTER FOUR: “PIRATES”
1. I am grateful to Peter DiMauro for pointing me to this extraordinary history. See also Siva Vaidhyanathan, Copyrights and Copywrongs, 87–93,
which details Edison’s “adventures” with copyright and patent.
2. J. A. Aberdeen, Hollywood Renegades: The Society of Independent Motion
Picture Producers (Cobblestone Entertainment, 2000) and expanded texts
posted at “The Edison Movie Monopoly: The Motion Picture Patents
Company vs. the Independent Outlaws,” available at link #11. For a discussion of the economic motive behind both these limits and the limits
imposed by Victor on phonographs, see Randal C. Picker, “From Edison
to the Broadcast Flag: Mechanisms of Consent and Refusal and the Propertization of Copyright” (September 2002), University of Chicago Law
School, James M. Olin Program in Law and Economics, Working Paper
No. 159.
3. Marc Wanamaker, “The First Studios,” The Silents Majority, archived at
link #12.
4. To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright: Hearings on
S. 6330 and H.R. 19853 Before the ( Joint) Committees on Patents, 59th
Cong. 59, 1st sess. (1906) (statement of Senator Alfred B. Kittredge, of
South Dakota, chairman), reprinted in Legislative History of the 1909
Copyright Act, E. Fulton Brylawski and Abe Goldman, eds. (South Hackensack, N.J.: Rothman Reprints, 1976).
5. To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 223 (statement of Nathan Burkan, attorney for the Music Publishers Association).
6. To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 226 (statement of Nathan Burkan, attorney for the Music Publishers Association).

7. To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 23 (statement of John Philip Sousa, composer).
8. To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 283–84
(statement of Albert Walker, representative of the Auto-Music Perforating Company of New York).
9. To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 376 (prepared memorandum of Philip Mauro, general patent counsel of the American Graphophone Company Association).
10. Copyright Law Revision: Hearings on S. 2499, S. 2900, H.R. 243, and
H.R. 11794 Before the ( Joint) Committee on Patents, 60th Cong., 1st
sess., 217 (1908) (statement of Senator Reed Smoot, chairman), reprinted
in Legislative History of the 1909 Copyright Act, E. Fulton Brylawski and
Abe Goldman, eds. (South Hackensack, N.J.: Rothman Reprints, 1976).
11. Copyright Law Revision: Report to Accompany H.R. 2512, House Committee on the Judiciary, 90th Cong., 1st sess., House Document no. 83, 66
(8 March 1967). I am grateful to Glenn Brown for drawing my attention
to this report.
12. See 17 United States Code, sections 106 and 110. At the beginning, record
companies printed “Not Licensed for Radio Broadcast” and other messages purporting to restrict the ability to play a record on a radio station.
Judge Learned Hand rejected the argument that a warning attached to a
record might restrict the rights of the radio station. See RCA Manufacturing Co. v. Whiteman, 114 F. 2d 86 (2nd Cir. 1940). See also Randal C.
Picker, “From Edison to the Broadcast Flag: Mechanisms of Consent and
Refusal and the Propertization of Copyright,” University of Chicago Law
Review 70 (2003): 281.
13. Copyright Law Revision—CATV: Hearing on S. 1006 Before the Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 89th Cong., 2nd sess., 78 (1966) (statement of
Rosel H. Hyde, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission).
14. Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 116 (statement of Douglas A. Anello,
general counsel of the National Association of Broadcasters).
15. Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 126 (statement of Ernest W. Jennes,
general counsel of the Association of Maximum Service Telecasters, Inc.).
16. Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 169 (joint statement of Arthur B.
Krim, president of United Artists Corp., and John Sinn, president of
United Artists Television, Inc.).
17. Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 209 (statement of Charlton Heston,
president of the Screen Actors Guild).
18. Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 216 (statement of Edwin M. Zimmerman, acting assistant attorney general).
19. See, for example, National Music Publisher’s Association, The Engine of Free
Expression: Copyright on the Internet—The Myth of Free Information, avail312 NOTES

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_03_307-330_r7dy.qxd 2/10/04 4:01 PM Page 313

able at link #13. “The threat of piracy—the use of someone else’s creative
work without permission or compensation—has grown with the Internet.”
CHAPTER FIVE: “PIRACY”
1. See IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), The
Recording Industry Commercial Piracy Report 2003, July 2003, available at
link #14. See also Ben Hunt, “Companies Warned on Music Piracy Risk,”
Financial Times, 14 February 2003, 11.
2. See Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite, Information Feudalism: Who Owns
the Knowledge Economy? (New York: The New Press, 2003), 10–13, 209.
The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement obligates member nations to create administrative and enforcement
mechanisms for intellectual property rights, a costly proposition for developing countries. Additionally, patent rights may lead to higher prices for
staple industries such as agriculture. Critics of TRIPS question the disparity between burdens imposed upon developing countries and benefits conferred to industrialized nations. TRIPS does permit governments to use
patents for public, noncommercial uses without first obtaining the patent
holder’s permission. Developing nations may be able to use this to gain the
benefits of foreign patents at lower prices. This is a promising strategy for
developing nations within the TRIPS framework.
3. For an analysis of the economic impact of copying technology, see Stan
Liebowitz, Rethinking the Network Economy (New York: Amacom, 2002),
144–90. “In some instances . . . the impact of piracy on the copyright holder’s
ability to appropriate the value of the work will be negligible. One obvious instance is the case where the individual engaging in pirating would not have
purchased an original even if pirating were not an option.” Ibid., 149.
4. Bach v. Longman, 98 Eng. Rep. 1274 (1777).
5. See Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary
National Bestseller That Changed the Way We Do Business (New York:
HarperBusiness, 2000). Professor Christensen examines why companies
that give rise to and dominate a product area are frequently unable to come
up with the most creative, paradigm-shifting uses for their own products.
This job usually falls to outside innovators, who reassemble existing technology in inventive ways. For a discussion of Christensen’s ideas, see
Lawrence Lessig, Future, 89–92, 139.
6. See Carolyn Lochhead, “Silicon Valley Dream, Hollywood Nightmare,”
San Francisco Chronicle, 24 September 2002, A1; “Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide,”
New Scientist, 6 July 2002, 42; Benny Evangelista, “Napster Names CEO,
Secures New Financing,” San Francisco Chronicle, 23 May 2003, C1; “Napster’s Wake-Up Call,” Economist, 24 June 2000, 23; John Naughton, “Hollywood at War with the Internet” (London) Times, 26 July 2002, 18.
7. See Ipsos-Insight, TEMPO: Keeping Pace with Online Music Distribution
NOTES 313

(September 2002), reporting that 28 percent of Americans aged twelve
and older have downloaded music off of the Internet and 30 percent have
listened to digital music files stored on their computers.
Amy Harmon, “Industry Offers a Carrot in Online Music Fight,” New
York Times, 6 June 2003, A1.
See Liebowitz, Rethinking the Network Economy,148–49.
See Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Technology Evolution and the Music Industry’s Business Model Crisis (2003), 3. This report describes the music industry’s effort to stigmatize the budding practice of cassette taping in the
1970s, including an advertising campaign featuring a cassette-shape skull
and the caption “Home taping is killing music.”
At the time digital audio tape became a threat, the Office of Technical
Assessment conducted a survey of consumer behavior. In 1988, 40 percent
of consumers older than ten had taped music to a cassette format. U.S.
Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Copyright and Home Copying:
Technology Challenges the Law, OTA-CIT-422 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, October 1989), 145–56.
U.S. Congress, Copyright and Home Copying, 4.
See Recording Industry Association of America, 2002 Yearend Statistics,
available at link #15. A later report indicates even greater losses. See
Recording Industry Association of America, Some Facts About Music Piracy,
25 June 2003, available at link #16: “In the past four years, unit shipments
of recorded music have fallen by 26 percent from 1.16 billion units in 1999
to 860 million units in 2002 in the United States (based on units shipped).
In terms of sales, revenues are down 14 percent, from $14.6 billion in 1999
to $12.6 billion last year (based on U.S. dollar value of shipments). The music industry worldwide has gone from a $39 billion industry in 2000 down
to a $32 billion industry in 2002 (based on U.S. dollar value of shipments).”
Jane Black, “Big Music’s Broken Record,” BusinessWeek online, 13 February 2003, available at link #17.
Ibid.
By one estimate, 75 percent of the music released by the major labels is no
longer in print. See Online Entertainment and Copyright Law—Coming
Soon to a Digital Device Near You: Hearing Before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 107th Cong., 1st sess. (3 April 2001) (prepared statement of the Future of Music Coalition), available at link #18.
While there are not good estimates of the number of used record stores in
existence, in 2002, there were 7,198 used book dealers in the United States,
an increase of 20 percent since 1993. See Book Hunter Press, The Quiet
Revolution: The Expansion of the Used Book Market (2002), available at link
#19. Used records accounted for $260 million in sales in 2002. See National Association of Recording Merchandisers, “2002 Annual Survey Results,” available at link #20.

314 NOTES

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_03_307-330_r7dy.qxd 2/10/04 4:01 PM Page 315

17. See Transcript of Proceedings, In Re: Napster Copyright Litigation at 3435 (N.D. Cal., 11 July 2001), nos. MDL-00-1369 MHP, C 99-5183
MHP, available at link #21. For an account of the litigation and its toll on
Napster, see Joseph Menn, All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napster (New York: Crown Business, 2003), 269–82.
18. Copyright Infringements (Audio and Video Recorders): Hearing on
S. 1758 Before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 97th Cong., 1st
and 2nd sess., 459 (1982) (testimony of Jack Valenti, president, Motion
Picture Association of America, Inc.).
19. Copyright Infringements (Audio and Video Recorders), 475.
20. Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Sony Corp. of America, 480 F. Supp. 429, 438
(C.D. Cal., 1979).
21. Copyright Infringements (Audio and Video Recorders), 485 (testimony
of Jack Valenti).
22. Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Sony Corp. of America, 659 F. 2d 963 (9th Cir.
1981).
23. Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 431 (1984).
24. These are the most important instances in our history, but there are other
cases as well. The technology of digital audio tape (DAT), for example,
was regulated by Congress to minimize the risk of piracy. The remedy
Congress imposed did burden DAT producers, by taxing tape sales and
controlling the technology of DAT. See Audio Home Recording Act of
1992 (Title 17 of the United States Code), Pub. L. No. 102-563, 106 Stat.
4237, codified at 17 U.S.C. §1001. Again, however, this regulation did not
eliminate the opportunity for free riding in the sense I’ve described. See
Lessig, Future, 71. See also Picker, “From Edison to the Broadcast Flag,”
University of Chicago Law Review 70 (2003): 293–96.
25. Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 432
(1984).
26. John Schwartz, “New Economy: The Attack on Peer-to-Peer Software
Echoes Past Efforts,” New York Times, 22 September 2003, C3.
“PROPERTY”
1. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson (13 August 1813) in
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6 (Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert
Ellery Bergh, eds., 1903), 330, 333–34.
2. As the legal realists taught American law, all property rights are intangible. A property right is simply a right that an individual has against the
world to do or not do certain things that may or may not attach to a physical object. The right itself is intangible, even if the object to which it is
(metaphorically) attached is tangible. See Adam Mossoff, “What Is Property? Putting the Pieces Back Together,” Arizona Law Review 45 (2003):
373, 429 n. 241.
NOTES 315

CHAPTER SIX: FOUNDERS
1. Jacob Tonson is typically remembered for his associations with prominent
eighteenth-century literary figures, especially John Dryden, and for his
handsome “definitive editions” of classic works. In addition to Romeo and
Juliet, he published an astonishing array of works that still remain at the
heart of the English canon, including collected works of Shakespeare, Ben
Jonson, John Milton, and John Dryden. See Keith Walker, “Jacob Tonson,
Bookseller,” American Scholar 61:3 (1992): 424–31.
2. Lyman Ray Patterson, Copyright in Historical Perspective (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968), 151–52.
3. As Siva Vaidhyanathan nicely argues, it is erroneous to call this a “copyright law.” See Vaidhyanathan, Copyrights and Copywrongs, 40.
4. Philip Wittenberg, The Protection and Marketing of Literary Property (New
York: J. Messner, Inc., 1937), 31.
5. A Letter to a Member of Parliament concerning the Bill now depending
in the House of Commons, for making more effectual an Act in the
Eighth Year of the Reign of Queen Anne, entitled, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the
Authors or Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned (London, 1735), in Brief Amici Curiae of Tyler T. Ochoa et al., 8,
Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003) (No. 01-618).
6. Lyman Ray Patterson, “Free Speech, Copyright, and Fair Use,” Vanderbilt
Law Review 40 (1987): 28. For a wonderfully compelling account, see
Vaidhyanathan, 37–48.
7. For a compelling account, see David Saunders, Authorship and Copyright
(London: Routledge, 1992), 62–69.
8. Mark Rose, Authors and Owners (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1993), 92.
9. Ibid., 93.
10. Lyman Ray Patterson, Copyright in Historical Perspective, 167 (quoting
Borwell).
11. Howard B. Abrams, “The Historic Foundation of American Copyright
Law: Exploding the Myth of Common Law Copyright,” Wayne Law Review 29 (1983): 1152.
12. Ibid., 1156.
13. Rose, 97.
14. Ibid.
CHAPTER SEVEN: RECORDERS
1. For an excellent argument that such use is “fair use,” but that lawyers don’t
permit recognition that it is “fair use,” see Richard A. Posner with William
F. Patry, “Fair Use and Statutory Reform in the Wake of Eldred ” (draft on
file with author), University of Chicago Law School, 5 August 2003.
316 NOTES

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_03_307-330_r7dy.qxd 2/10/04 4:01 PM Page 317

CHAPTER EIGHT: TRANSFORMERS
1. Technically, the rights that Alben had to clear were mainly those of publicity—rights an artist has to control the commercial exploitation of his image. But these rights, too, burden “Rip, Mix, Burn” creativity, as this chapter
evinces.
2. U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Acquisition Management, Seven
Steps to Performance-Based Services Acquisition, available at link #22.
CHAPTER NINE: COLLECTORS
1. The temptations remain, however. Brewster Kahle reports that the White
House changes its own press releases without notice. A May 13, 2003, press
release stated, “Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.” That was later
changed, without notice, to “Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.”
E-mail from Brewster Kahle, 1 December 2003.
2. Doug Herrick, “Toward a National Film Collection: Motion Pictures at the
Library of Congress,” Film Library Quarterly 13 nos. 2–3 (1980): 5; Anthony Slide, Nitrate Won’t Wait: A History of Film Preservation in the United
States ( Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1992), 36.
3. Dave Barns, “Fledgling Career in Antique Books: Woodstock Landlord,
Bar Owner Starts a New Chapter by Adopting Business,” Chicago Tribune,
5 September 1997, at Metro Lake 1L. Of books published between 1927
and 1946, only 2.2 percent were in print in 2002. R. Anthony Reese, “The
First Sale Doctrine in the Era of Digital Networks,” Boston College Law Review 44 (2003): 593 n. 51.
CHAPTER TEN: “PROPERTY”
1. Home Recording of Copyrighted Works: Hearings on H.R. 4783, H.R.
4794, H.R. 4808, H.R. 5250, H.R. 5488, and H.R. 5705 Before the Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice of
the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives, 97th
Cong., 2nd sess. (1982): 65 (testimony of Jack Valenti).
2. Lawyers speak of “property” not as an absolute thing, but as a bundle of
rights that are sometimes associated with a particular object. Thus, my
“property right” to my car gives me the right to exclusive use, but not the
right to drive at 150 miles an hour. For the best effort to connect the ordinary meaning of “property” to “lawyer talk,” see Bruce Ackerman, Private
Property and the Constitution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977),
26–27.
3. By describing the way law affects the other three modalities, I don’t mean
to suggest that the other three don’t affect law. Obviously, they do. Law’s
only distinction is that it alone speaks as if it has a right self-consciously to
change the other three. The right of the other three is more timidly expressed. See Lawrence Lessig, Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace (New
NOTES 317

York: Basic Books, 1999): 90–95; Lawrence Lessig, “The New Chicago
School,” Journal of Legal Studies, June 1998.
Some people object to this way of talking about “liberty.” They object because their focus when considering the constraints that exist at any particular moment are constraints imposed exclusively by the government. For
instance, if a storm destroys a bridge, these people think it is meaningless
to say that one’s liberty has been restrained. A bridge has washed out, and
it’s harder to get from one place to another. To talk about this as a loss of
freedom, they say, is to confuse the stuff of politics with the vagaries of ordinary life.
I don’t mean to deny the value in this narrower view, which depends
upon the context of the inquiry. I do, however, mean to argue against any
insistence that this narrower view is the only proper view of liberty. As I
argued in Code, we come from a long tradition of political thought with a
broader focus than the narrow question of what the government did when.
John Stuart Mill defended freedom of speech, for example, from the
tyranny of narrow minds, not from the fear of government prosecution;
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co., 1978), 19.
John R. Commons famously defended the economic freedom of labor
from constraints imposed by the market; John R. Commons, “The Right
to Work,” in Malcom Rutherford and Warren J. Samuels, eds., John R.
Commons: Selected Essays (London: Routledge: 1997), 62. The Americans
with Disabilities Act increases the liberty of people with physical disabilities by changing the architecture of certain public places, thereby making
access to those places easier; 42 United States Code, section 12101 (2000).
Each of these interventions to change existing conditions changes the
liberty of a particular group. The effect of those interventions should be
accounted for in order to understand the effective liberty that each of these
groups might face.
See Geoffrey Smith, “Film vs. Digital: Can Kodak Build a Bridge?” BusinessWeek online, 2 August 1999, available at link #23. For a more recent
analysis of Kodak’s place in the market, see Chana R. Schoenberger, “Can
Kodak Make Up for Lost Moments?” Forbes.com, 6 October 2003, available at link #24.
Fred Warshofsky, The Patent Wars (New York: Wiley, 1994), 170–71.
See, for example, James Boyle, “A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net?” Duke Law Journal 47 (1997): 87.
William W. Crosskey, Politics and the Constitution in the History of the
United States (London: Cambridge University Press, 1953), vol. 1, 485–86:
“extinguish[ing], by plain implication of ‘the supreme Law of the Land,’
the perpetual rights which authors had, or were supposed by some to have, under
the Common Law” (emphasis added).
Although 13,000 titles were published in the United States from 1790 to

318 NOTES

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_03_307-330_r7dy.qxd 2/10/04 4:01 PM Page 319

10.

11.
12.

13.

14.
15.

16.

17.

1799, only 556 copyright registrations were filed; John Tebbel, A History of
Book Publishing in the United States, vol. 1, The Creation of an Industry,
1630–1865 (New York: Bowker, 1972), 141. Of the 21,000 imprints
recorded before 1790, only twelve were copyrighted under the 1790 act;
William J. Maher, Copyright Term, Retrospective Extension and the Copyright Law of 1790 in Historical Context, 7–10 (2002), available at link #25.
Thus, the overwhelming majority of works fell immediately into the public domain. Even those works that were copyrighted fell into the public
domain quickly, because the term of copyright was short. The initial term
of copyright was fourteen years, with the option of renewal for an additional fourteen years. Copyright Act of May 31, 1790, §1, 1 stat. 124.
Few copyright holders ever chose to renew their copyrights. For instance,
of the 25,006 copyrights registered in 1883, only 894 were renewed in
1910. For a year-by-year analysis of copyright renewal rates, see Barbara
A. Ringer, “Study No. 31: Renewal of Copyright,” Studies on Copyright,
vol. 1 (New York: Practicing Law Institute, 1963), 618. For a more recent
and comprehensive analysis, see William M. Landes and Richard A. Posner, “Indefinitely Renewable Copyright,” University of Chicago Law Review 70 (2003): 471, 498–501, and accompanying figures.
See Ringer, ch. 9, n. 2.
These statistics are understated. Between the years 1910 and 1962 (the
first year the renewal term was extended), the average term was never
more than thirty-two years, and averaged thirty years. See Landes and
Posner, “Indefinitely Renewable Copyright,” loc. cit.
See Thomas Bender and David Sampliner, “Poets, Pirates, and the Creation of American Literature,” 29 New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 255 (1997), and James Gilraeth, ed., Federal
Copyright Records, 1790–1800 (U.S. G.P.O., 1987).
Jonathan Zittrain, “The Copyright Cage,” Legal Affairs, July/August
2003, available at link #26.
Professor Rubenfeld has presented a powerful constitutional argument
about the difference that copyright law should draw (from the perspective
of the First Amendment) between mere “copies” and derivative works. See
Jed Rubenfeld, “The Freedom of Imagination: Copyright’s Constitutionality,” Yale Law Journal 112 (2002): 1–60 (see especially pp. 53–59).
This is a simplification of the law, but not much of one. The law certainly
regulates more than “copies”—a public performance of a copyrighted
song, for example, is regulated even though performance per se doesn’t
make a copy; 17 United States Code, section 106(4). And it certainly sometimes doesn’t regulate a “copy”; 17 United States Code, section 112(a). But
the presumption under the existing law (which regulates “copies;” 17
United States Code, section 102) is that if there is a copy, there is a right.
Thus, my argument is not that in each place that copyright law extends,
NOTES 319

we should repeal it. It is instead that we should have a good argument for
its extending where it does, and should not determine its reach on the basis of arbitrary and automatic changes caused by technology.
I don’t mean “nature” in the sense that it couldn’t be different, but rather that
its present instantiation entails a copy. Optical networks need not make
copies of content they transmit, and a digital network could be designed to
delete anything it copies so that the same number of copies remain.
See David Lange, “Recognizing the Public Domain,” Law and Contemporary Problems 44 (1981): 172–73.
Ibid. See also Vaidhyanathan, Copyrights and Copywrongs, 1–3.
In principle, a contract might impose a requirement on me. I might, for
example, buy a book from you that includes a contract that says I will read
it only three times, or that I promise to read it three times. But that obligation (and the limits for creating that obligation) would come from the
contract, not from copyright law, and the obligations of contract would
not necessarily pass to anyone who subsequently acquired the book.
See Pamela Samuelson, “Anticircumvention Rules: Threat to Science,”
Science 293 (2001): 2028; Brendan I. Koerner, “Play Dead: Sony Muzzles
the Techies Who Teach a Robot Dog New Tricks,” American Prospect, 1
January 2002; “Court Dismisses Computer Scientists’ Challenge to
DMCA,” Intellectual Property Litigation Reporter, 11 December 2001; Bill
Holland, “Copyright Act Raising Free-Speech Concerns,” Billboard, 26
May 2001; Janelle Brown, “Is the RIAA Running Scared?” Salon.com, 26
April 2001; Electronic Frontier Foundation, “Frequently Asked Questions about Felten and USENIX v. RIAA Legal Case,” available at link #27.
Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417,
455 fn. 27 (1984). Rogers never changed his view about the VCR. See
James Lardner, Fast Forward: Hollywood, the Japanese, and the Onslaught of
the VCR (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 270–71.
For an early and prescient analysis, see Rebecca Tushnet, “Legal Fictions,
Copyright, Fan Fiction, and a New Common Law,” Loyola of Los Angeles
Entertainment Law Journal 17 (1997): 651.
FCC Oversight: Hearing Before the Senate Commerce, Science and
Transportation Committee, 108th Cong., 1st sess. (22 May 2003) (statement of Senator John McCain).
Lynette Holloway, “Despite a Marketing Blitz, CD Sales Continue to
Slide,” New York Times, 23 December 2002.
Molly Ivins, “Media Consolidation Must Be Stopped,” Charleston Gazette,
31 May 2003.
James Fallows, “The Age of Murdoch,” Atlantic Monthly (September
2003): 89.
Leonard Hill, “The Axis of Access,” remarks before Weidenbaum Center
Forum, “Entertainment Economics: The Movie Industry,” St. Louis, Mis-

320 NOTES

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_03_307-330_r7dy.qxd 2/10/04 4:01 PM Page 321

30.

31.
32.
33.

34.

souri, 3 April 2003 (transcript of prepared remarks available at link #28;
for the Lear story, not included in the prepared remarks, see link #29).
NewsCorp./DirecTV Merger and Media Consolidation: Hearings on
Media Ownership Before the Senate Commerce Committee, 108th
Cong., 1st sess. (2003) (testimony of Gene Kimmelman on behalf of Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America), available at link
#30. Kimmelman quotes Victoria Riskin, president of Writers Guild of
America, West, in her Remarks at FCC En Banc Hearing, Richmond,
Virginia, 27 February 2003.
Ibid.
“Barry Diller Takes on Media Deregulation,” Now with Bill Moyers, Bill
Moyers, 25 April 2003, edited transcript available at link #31.
Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary National Bestseller that Changed the Way We Do Business (Cambridge: Harvard
Business School Press, 1997). Christensen acknowledges that the idea was
first suggested by Dean Kim Clark. See Kim B. Clark, “The Interaction of
Design Hierarchies and Market Concepts in Technological Evolution,”
Research Policy 14 (1985): 235–51. For a more recent study, see Richard
Foster and Sarah Kaplan, Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are
Built to Last Underperform the Market—and How to Successfully Transform
Them (New York: Currency/Doubleday, 2001).
The Marijuana Policy Project, in February 2003, sought to place ads that
directly responded to the Nick and Norm series on stations within the
Washington, D.C., area. Comcast rejected the ads as “against [their] policy.” The local NBC affiliate, WRC, rejected the ads without reviewing
them. The local ABC affiliate, WJOA, originally agreed to run the ads and
accepted payment to do so, but later decided not to run the ads and returned the collected fees. Interview with Neal Levine, 15 October 2003.
These restrictions are, of course, not limited to drug policy. See, for example, Nat Ives, “On the Issue of an Iraq War, Advocacy Ads Meet with
Rejection from TV Networks,” New York Times, 13 March 2003, C4. Outside of election-related air time there is very little that the FCC or the
courts are willing to do to even the playing field. For a general overview,
see Rhonda Brown, “Ad Hoc Access: The Regulation of Editorial Advertising on Television and Radio,” Yale Law and Policy Review 6 (1988):
449–79, and for a more recent summary of the stance of the FCC and the
courts, see Radio-Television News Directors Association v. FCC, 184 F. 3d
872 (D.C. Cir. 1999). Municipal authorities exercise the same authority as
the networks. In a recent example from San Francisco, the San Francisco
transit authority rejected an ad that criticized its Muni diesel buses. Phillip
Matier and Andrew Ross, “Antidiesel Group Fuming After Muni Rejects
Ad,” SFGate.com, 16 June 2003, available at link #32. The ground was
that the criticism was “too controversial.”
NOTES 321

35. Siva Vaidhyanathan captures a similar point in his “four surrenders” of
copyright law in the digital age. See Vaidhyanathan, 159–60.
36. It was the single most important contribution of the legal realist movement to demonstrate that all property rights are always crafted to balance
public and private interests. See Thomas C. Grey, “The Disintegration of
Property,” in Nomos XXII: Property, J. Roland Pennock and John W.
Chapman, eds. (New York: New York University Press, 1980).
CHAPTER ELEVEN: CHIMERA
1. H. G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind” (1904, 1911). See H. G. Wells,
The Country of the Blind and Other Stories, Michael Sherborne, ed. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
2. For an excellent summary, see the report prepared by GartnerG2 and the
Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, “Copyright and Digital Media in a Post-Napster World,” 27 June 2003, available
at link #33. Reps. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard L. Berman
(D-Calif.) have introduced a bill that would treat unauthorized on-line
copying as a felony offense with punishments ranging as high as five years
imprisonment; see Jon Healey, “House Bill Aims to Up Stakes on Piracy,”
Los Angeles Times, 17 July 2003, available at link #34. Civil penalties are
currently set at $150,000 per copied song. For a recent (and unsuccessful)
legal challenge to the RIAA’s demand that an ISP reveal the identity of a
user accused of sharing more than 600 songs through a family computer,
see RIAA v. Verizon Internet Services (In re. Verizon Internet Services), 240 F.
Supp. 2d 24 (D.D.C. 2003). Such a user could face liability ranging as
high as $90 million. Such astronomical figures furnish the RIAA with a
powerful arsenal in its prosecution of file sharers. Settlements ranging
from $12,000 to $17,500 for four students accused of heavy file sharing on
university networks must have seemed a mere pittance next to the $98 billion the RIAA could seek should the matter proceed to court. See Elizabeth Young, “Downloading Could Lead to Fines,” redandblack.com, 26
August 2003, available at link #35. For an example of the RIAA’s targeting of student file sharing, and of the subpoenas issued to universities to
reveal student file-sharer identities, see James Collins, “RIAA Steps Up
Bid to Force BC, MIT to Name Students,” Boston Globe, 8 August 2003,
D3, available at link #36.
3. WIPO and the DMCA One Year Later: Assessing Consumer Access to
Digital Entertainment on the Internet and Other Media: Hearing Before
the Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection, House Committee on Commerce, 106th Cong. 29 (1999) (statement
of Peter Harter, vice president, Global Public Policy and Standards, EMusic.com), available in LEXIS, Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony File.
322 NOTES

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_03_307-330_r7dy.qxd 2/10/04 4:01 PM Page 323

CHAPTER TWELVE: HARMS
1. See Lynne W. Jeter, Disconnected: Deceit and Betrayal at WorldCom (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2003), 176, 204; for details of the settlement, see MCI press release, “MCI Wins U.S. District Court Approval for
SEC Settlement” (7 July 2003), available at link #37.
2. The bill, modeled after California’s tort reform model, was passed in the
House of Representatives but defeated in a Senate vote in July 2003. For
an overview, see Tanya Albert, “Measure Stalls in Senate: ‘We’ll Be Back,’
Say Tort Reformers,” amednews.com, 28 July 2003, available at link #38,
and “Senate Turns Back Malpractice Caps,” CBSNews.com, 9 July 2003,
available at link #39. President Bush has continued to urge tort reform in
recent months.
3. See Danit Lidor, “Artists Just Wanna Be Free,” Wired, 7 July 2003, available at link #40. For an overview of the exhibition, see link #41.
4. See Joseph Menn, “Universal, EMI Sue Napster Investor,” Los Angeles
Times, 23 April 2003. For a parallel argument about the effects on innovation in the distribution of music, see Janelle Brown, “The Music Revolution Will Not Be Digitized,” Salon.com, 1 June 2001, available at link #42.
See also Jon Healey, “Online Music Services Besieged,” Los Angeles
Times, 28 May 2001.
5. Rafe Needleman, “Driving in Cars with MP3s,” Business 2.0, 16 June
2003, available at link #43. I am grateful to Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli
for this example.
6. “Copyright and Digital Media in a Post-Napster World,” GartnerG2 and
the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School
(2003), 33–35, available at link #44.
7. GartnerG2, 26–27.
8. See David McGuire, “Tech Execs Square Off Over Piracy,” Newsbytes, 28
February 2002 (Entertainment).
9. Jessica Litman, Digital Copyright (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books,
2001).
10. The only circuit court exception is found in Recording Industry Association
of America (RIAA) v. Diamond Multimedia Systems, 180 F. 3d 1072 (9th
Cir. 1999). There the court of appeals for the Ninth Circuit reasoned that
makers of a portable MP3 player were not liable for contributory copyright infringement for a device that is unable to record or redistribute music (a device whose only copying function is to render portable a music file
already stored on a user’s hard drive).
At the district court level, the only exception is found in MetroGoldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 259 F. Supp. 2d 1029 (C.D.
Cal., 2003), where the court found the link between the distributor and
any given user’s conduct too attenuated to make the distributor liable for
contributory or vicarious infringement liability.
NOTES 323

11. For example, in July 2002, Representative Howard Berman introduced the
Peer-to-Peer Piracy Prevention Act (H.R. 5211), which would immunize
copyright holders from liability for damage done to computers when the
copyright holders use technology to stop copyright infringement. In August 2002, Representative Billy Tauzin introduced a bill to mandate that
technologies capable of rebroadcasting digital copies of films broadcast on
TV (i.e., computers) respect a “broadcast flag” that would disable copying
of that content. And in March of the same year, Senator Fritz Hollings
introduced the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion
Act, which mandated copyright protection technology in all digital media
devices. See GartnerG2, “Copyright and Digital Media in a Post-Napster
World,” 27 June 2003, 33–34, available at link #44.
12. Lessing, 239.
13. Ibid., 229.
14. This example was derived from fees set by the original Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) proceedings, and is drawn from an example
offered by Professor William Fisher. Conference Proceedings, iLaw
(Stanford), 3 July 2003, on file with author. Professors Fisher and Zittrain
submitted testimony in the CARP proceeding that was ultimately rejected.
See Jonathan Zittrain, Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings
and Ephemeral Recordings, Docket No. 2000-9, CARP DTRA 1 and 2,
available at link #45.
For an excellent analysis making a similar point, see Randal C. Picker,
“Copyright as Entry Policy: The Case of Digital Distribution,” Antitrust
Bulletin (Summer/Fall 2002): 461: “This was not confusion, these are just
old-fashioned entry barriers. Analog radio stations are protected from digital entrants, reducing entry in radio and diversity. Yes, this is done in the
name of getting royalties to copyright holders, but, absent the play of powerful interests, that could have been done in a media-neutral way.”
15. Mike Graziano and Lee Rainie, “The Music Downloading Deluge,” Pew
Internet and American Life Project (24 April 2001), available at link #46.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that 37 million
Americans had downloaded music files from the Internet by early 2001.
16. Alex Pham, “The Labels Strike Back: N.Y. Girl Settles RIAA Case,” Los
Angeles Times, 10 September 2003, Business.
17. Jeffrey A. Miron and Jeffrey Zwiebel, “Alcohol Consumption During Prohibition,” American Economic Review 81, no. 2 (1991): 242.
18. National Drug Control Policy: Hearing Before the House Government
Reform Committee, 108th Cong., 1st sess. (5 March 2003) (statement of
John P. Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy).
19. See James Andreoni, Brian Erard, and Jonathon Feinstein, “Tax Compliance,” Journal of Economic Literature 36 (1998): 818 (survey of compliance
literature).
324 NOTES

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_03_307-330_r7dy.qxd 2/10/04 4:01 PM Page 325

20. See Frank Ahrens, “RIAA’s Lawsuits Meet Surprised Targets; Single
Mother in Calif., 12-Year-Old Girl in N.Y. Among Defendants,” Washington Post, 10 September 2003, E1; Chris Cobbs, “Worried Parents Pull
Plug on File ‘Stealing’; With the Music Industry Cracking Down on File
Swapping, Parents are Yanking Software from Home PCs to Avoid Being
Sued,” Orlando Sentinel Tribune, 30 August 2003, C1; Jefferson Graham,
“Recording Industry Sues Parents,” USA Today, 15 September 2003, 4D;
John Schwartz, “She Says She’s No Music Pirate. No Snoop Fan, Either,”
New York Times, 25 September 2003, C1; Margo Varadi, “Is Brianna a
Criminal?” Toronto Star, 18 September 2003, P7.
21. See “Revealed: How RIAA Tracks Downloaders: Music Industry Discloses Some Methods Used,” CNN.com, available at link #47.
22. See Jeff Adler, “Cambridge: On Campus, Pirates Are Not Penitent,” Boston
Globe, 18 May 2003, City Weekly, 1; Frank Ahrens, “Four Students Sued
over Music Sites; Industry Group Targets File Sharing at Colleges,” Washington Post, 4 April 2003, E1; Elizabeth Armstrong, “Students ‘Rip, Mix,
Burn’ at Their Own Risk,” Christian Science Monitor, 2 September 2003,
20; Robert Becker and Angela Rozas, “Music Pirate Hunt Turns to Loyola; Two Students Names Are Handed Over; Lawsuit Possible,” Chicago
Tribune, 16 July 2003, 1C; Beth Cox, “RIAA Trains Antipiracy Guns on
Universities,” Internet News, 30 January 2003, available at link #48; Benny
Evangelista, “Download Warning 101: Freshman Orientation This Fall to
Include Record Industry Warnings Against File Sharing,” San Francisco
Chronicle, 11 August 2003, E11; “Raid, Letters Are Weapons at Universities,” USA Today, 26 September 2000, 3D.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ELDRED
1. There’s a parallel here with pornography that is a bit hard to describe, but
it’s a strong one. One phenomenon that the Internet created was a world
of noncommercial pornographers—people who were distributing porn
but were not making money directly or indirectly from that distribution.
Such a class didn’t exist before the Internet came into being because the
costs of distributing porn were so high. Yet this new class of distributors
got special attention in the Supreme Court, when the Court struck down
the Communications Decency Act of 1996. It was partly because of the
burden on noncommercial speakers that the statute was found to exceed
Congress’s power. The same point could have been made about noncommercial publishers after the advent of the Internet. The Eric Eldreds of the
world before the Internet were extremely few. Yet one would think it at
least as important to protect the Eldreds of the world as to protect noncommercial pornographers.
2. The full text is: “Sonny [Bono] wanted the term of copyright protection to
last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the
NOTES 325

Constitution. I invite all of you to work with me to strengthen our copyright laws in all of the ways available to us. As you know, there is also Jack
Valenti’s proposal for a term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress,” 144 Cong. Rec. H9946, 9951-2
(October 7, 1998).
Associated Press, “Disney Lobbying for Copyright Extension No Mickey
Mouse Effort; Congress OKs Bill Granting Creators 20 More Years,”
Chicago Tribune, 17 October 1998, 22.
See Nick Brown, “Fair Use No More?: Copyright in the Information
Age,” available at link #49.
Alan K. Ota, “Disney in Washington: The Mouse That Roars,” Congressional Quarterly This Week, 8 August 1990, available at link #50.
United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 564 (1995).
United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000).
If it is a principle about enumerated powers, then the principle carries
from one enumerated power to another. The animating point in the context of the Commerce Clause was that the interpretation offered by the
government would allow the government unending power to regulate
commerce—the limitation to interstate commerce notwithstanding. The
same point is true in the context of the Copyright Clause. Here, too, the
government’s interpretation would allow the government unending power
to regulate copyrights—the limitation to “limited times” notwithstanding.
Brief of the Nashville Songwriters Association, Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S.
186 (2003) (No. 01-618), n.10, available at link #51.
The figure of 2 percent is an extrapolation from the study by the Congressional Research Service, in light of the estimated renewal ranges. See Brief
of Petitioners, Eldred v. Ashcroft, 7, available at link #52.
See David G. Savage, “High Court Scene of Showdown on Copyright
Law,” Los Angeles Times, 6 October 2002; David Streitfeld, “Classic
Movies, Songs, Books at Stake; Supreme Court Hears Arguments Today
on Striking Down Copyright Extension,” Orlando Sentinel Tribune, 9 October 2002.
Brief of Hal Roach Studios and Michael Agee as Amicus Curiae Supporting the Petitoners, Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003) (No. 01618), 12. See also Brief of Amicus Curiae filed on behalf of Petitioners by
the Internet Archive, Eldred v. Ashcroft, available at link #53.
Jason Schultz, “The Myth of the 1976 Copyright ‘Chaos’ Theory,” 20 December 2002, available at link #54.
Brief of Amici Dr. Seuss Enterprise et al., Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186
(2003) (No. 01-618), 19.
Dinitia Smith, “Immortal Words, Immortal Royalties? Even Mickey
Mouse Joins the Fray,” New York Times, 28 March 1998, B7.

326 NOTES

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_03_307-330_r7dy.qxd 2/10/04 4:01 PM Page 327

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: ELDRED II
1. Until the 1908 Berlin Act of the Berne Convention, national copyright
legislation sometimes made protection depend upon compliance with formalities such as registration, deposit, and affixation of notice of the author’s claim of copyright. However, starting with the 1908 act, every text
of the Convention has provided that “the enjoyment and the exercise” of
rights guaranteed by the Convention “shall not be subject to any formality.” The prohibition against formalities is presently embodied in Article
5(2) of the Paris Text of the Berne Convention. Many countries continue
to impose some form of deposit or registration requirement, albeit not as
a condition of copyright. French law, for example, requires the deposit of
copies of works in national repositories, principally the National Museum.
Copies of books published in the United Kingdom must be deposited in
the British Library. The German Copyright Act provides for a Registrar
of Authors where the author’s true name can be filed in the case of anonymous or pseudonymous works. Paul Goldstein, International Intellectual
Property Law, Cases and Materials (New York: Foundation Press, 2001),
153–54.
CONCLUSION
1. Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, “Final Report: Integrating
Intellectual Property Rights and Development Policy” (London, 2002),
available at link #55. According to a World Health Organization press release issued 9 July 2002, only 230,000 of the 6 million who need drugs in
the developing world receive them—and half of them are in Brazil.
2. See Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite, Information Feudalism: Who
Owns the Knowledge Economy? (New York: The New Press, 2003), 37.
3. International Intellectual Property Institute (IIPI), Patent Protection and
Access to HIV/AIDS Pharmaceuticals in Sub-Saharan Africa, a Report Prepared for the World Intellectual Property Organization (Washington, D.C.,
2000), 14, available at link #56. For a firsthand account of the struggle over
South Africa, see Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice,
Drug Policy, and Human Resources, House Committee on Government
Reform, H. Rep., 1st sess., Ser. No. 106-126 (22 July 1999), 150–57
(statement of James Love).
4. International Intellectual Property Institute (IIPI), Patent Protection and
Access to HIV/AIDS Pharmaceuticals in Sub-Saharan Africa, a Report Prepared for the World Intellectual Property Organization (Washington, D.C.,
2000), 15.
5. See Sabin Russell, “New Crusade to Lower AIDS Drug Costs: Africa’s
Needs at Odds with Firms’ Profit Motive,” San Francisco Chronicle, 24
May 1999, A1, available at link #57 (“compulsory licenses and gray mar-

kets pose a threat to the entire system of intellectual property protection”);
Robert Weissman, “AIDS and Developing Countries: Democratizing Access to Essential Medicines,” Foreign Policy in Focus 4:23 (August 1999),
available at link #58 (describing U.S. policy); John A. Harrelson, “TRIPS,
Pharmaceutical Patents, and the HIV/AIDS Crisis: Finding the Proper
Balance Between Intellectual Property Rights and Compassion, a Synopsis,” Widener Law Symposium Journal (Spring 2001): 175.
Jonathan Krim, “The Quiet War over Open-Source,” Washington Post, 21
August 2003, E1, available at link #59; William New, “Global Group’s
Shift on ‘Open Source’ Meeting Spurs Stir,” National Journal’s Technology
Daily, 19 August 2003, available at link #60; William New, “U.S. Official
Opposes ‘Open Source’ Talks at WIPO,” National Journal’s Technology
Daily, 19 August 2003, available at link #61.
I should disclose that I was one of the people who asked WIPO for the
meeting.
Microsoft’s position about free and open source software is more sophisticated. As it has repeatedly asserted, it has no problem with “open source”
software or software in the public domain. Microsoft’s principal opposition is to “free software” licensed under a “copyleft” license, meaning a license that requires the licensee to adopt the same terms on any derivative
work. See Bradford L. Smith, “The Future of Software: Enabling the Marketplace to Decide,” Government Policy Toward Open Source Software
(Washington, D.C.: AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies,
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 2002), 69,
available at link #62. See also Craig Mundie, Microsoft senior vice president, The Commercial Software Model, discussion at New York University
Stern School of Business (3 May 2001), available at link #63.
Krim, “The Quiet War over Open-Source,” available at link #64.
See Drahos with Braithwaite, Information Feudalism, 210–20.
John Borland, “RIAA Sues 261 File Swappers,” CNET News.com, 8
September 2003, available at link #65; Paul R. La Monica, “Music Industry Sues Swappers,” CNN/Money, 8 September 2003, available at link
#66; Soni Sangha and Phyllis Furman with Robert Gearty, “Sued for a
Song, N.Y.C. 12-Yr-Old Among 261 Cited as Sharers,” New York Daily
News, 9 September 2003, 3; Frank Ahrens, “RIAA’s Lawsuits Meet Surprised Targets; Single Mother in Calif., 12-Year-Old Girl in N.Y. Among
Defendants,” Washington Post, 10 September 2003, E1; Katie Dean,
“Schoolgirl Settles with RIAA,” Wired News, 10 September 2003, available at link #67.
Jon Wiederhorn, “Eminem Gets Sued . . . by a Little Old Lady,” mtv.com,
17 September 2003, available at link #68.
Kenji Hall, Associated Press, “Japanese Book May Be Inspiration for Dylan Songs,” Kansascity.com, 9 July 2003, available at link #69.

328 NOTES

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_03_307-330_r7dy.qxd 2/10/04 4:01 PM Page 329

14. “BBC Plans to Open Up Its Archive to the Public,” BBC press release,
24 August 2003, available at link #70.
15. “Creative Commons and Brazil,” Creative Commons Weblog, 6 August
2003, available at link #71.
US, NOW
1. See, for example, Marc Rotenberg, “Fair Information Practices and the Architecture of Privacy (What Larry Doesn’t Get),” Stanford Technology Law
Review 1 (2001): par. 6–18, available at link #72 (describing examples in
which technology defines privacy policy). See also Jeffrey Rosen, The Naked
Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age (New York: Random House, 2004) (mapping tradeoffs between technology and privacy).
2. Willful Infringement: A Report from the Front Lines of the Real Culture Wars
(2003), produced by Jed Horovitz, directed by Greg Hittelman, a Fiat Lucre production, available at link #72.
THEM, SOON
1. The proposal I am advancing here would apply to American works only.
Obviously, I believe it would be beneficial for the same idea to be adopted
by other countries as well.
2. There would be a complication with derivative works that I have not
solved here. In my view, the law of derivatives creates a more complicated
system than is justified by the marginal incentive it creates.
3. “A Radical Rethink,” Economist, 366:8308 (25 January 2003): 15, available
at link #74.
4. Department of Veterans Affairs, Veteran’s Application for Compensation
and/or Pension, VA Form 21-526 (OMB Approved No. 2900-0001),
available at link #75.
5. Benjamin Kaplan, An Unhurried View of Copyright (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1967), 32.
6. Ibid., 56.
7. Paul Goldstein, Copyright’s Highway: From Gutenberg to the Celestial Jukebox (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 187–216.
8. See, for example, “Music Media Watch,” The J@pan Inc. Newsletter,
3 April 2002, available at link #76.
9. William Fisher, Digital Music: Problems and Possibilities (last revised:
10 October 2000), available at link #77; William Fisher, Promises to Keep:
Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment (forthcoming) (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2004), ch. 6, available at link #78. Professor Netanel has proposed a related idea that would exempt noncommercial sharing from the reach of copyright and would establish compensation to
artists to balance any loss. See Neil Weinstock Netanel, “Impose a Noncommercial Use Levy to Allow Free P2P File Sharing,” available at link
NOTES 329

#79. For other proposals, see Lawrence Lessig, “Who’s Holding Back
Broadband?” Washington Post, 8 January 2002, A17; Philip S. Corwin on
behalf of Sharman Networks, A Letter to Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr.,
Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 26 February 2002,
available at link #80; Serguei Osokine, A Quick Case for Intellectual Property
Use Fee (IPUF), 3 March 2002, available at link #81; Jefferson Graham,
“Kazaa, Verizon Propose to Pay Artists Directly,” USA Today, 13 May
2002, available at link #82; Steven M. Cherry, “Getting Copyright Right,”
IEEE Spectrum Online, 1 July 2002, available at link #83; Declan McCullagh, “Verizon’s Copyright Campaign,” CNET News.com, 27 August
2002, available at link #84.
Fisher’s proposal is very similar to Richard Stallman’s proposal for
DAT. Unlike Fisher’s, Stallman’s proposal would not pay artists directly
proportionally, though more popular artists would get more than the less
popular. As is typical with Stallman, his proposal predates the current debate by about a decade. See link #85.
10. Lawrence Lessig, “Copyright’s First Amendment” (Melville B. Nimmer
Memorial Lecture), UCLA Law Review 48 (2001): 1057, 1069–70.
11. A good example is the work of Professor Stan Liebowitz. Liebowitz is to
be commended for his careful review of data about infringement, leading
him to question his own publicly stated position—twice. He initially predicted that downloading would substantially harm the industry. He then
revised his view in light of the data, and he has since revised his view again.
Compare Stan J. Liebowitz, Rethinking the Network Economy: The True
Forces That Drive the Digital Marketplace (New York: Amacom, 2002), 173
(reviewing his original view but expressing skepticism) with Stan J.
Liebowitz, “Will MP3s Annihilate the Record Industry?” working paper,
June 2003, available at link #86.
Liebowitz’s careful analysis is extremely valuable in estimating the effect of file-sharing technology. In my view, however, he underestimates the
costs of the legal system. See, for example, Rethinking, 174–76.

330 NOTES

<http://free-culture.org/get-it>

4TH PASS PAGES

14773_05_331-332_r4jm.qxd 2/10/04 4:33 PM Page 331

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is the product of a long and as yet unsuccessful struggle that
began when I read of Eric Eldredâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s war to keep books free. Eldredâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
work helped launch a movement, the free culture movement, and it is
to him that this book is dedicated.
I received guidance in various places from friends and academics,
including Glenn Brown, Peter DiCola, Jennifer Mnookin, Richard
Posner, Mark Rose, and Kathleen Sullivan. And I received correction
and guidance from many amazing students at Stanford Law School
and Stanford University. They included Andrew B. Coan, John Eden,
James P. Fellers, Christopher Guzelian, Erica Goldberg, Robert Hallman, Andrew Harris, Matthew Kahn, Brian Link, Ohad Mayblum,
Alina Ng, and Erica Platt. I am particularly grateful to Catherine
Crump and Harry Surden, who helped direct their research, and to
Laura Lynch, who brilliantly managed the army that they assembled,
and provided her own critical eye on much of this.
Yuko Noguchi helped me to understand the laws of Japan as well as
its culture. I am thankful to her, and to the many in Japan who helped
me prepare this book: Joi Ito, Takayuki Matsutani, Naoto Misaki,
Michihiro Sasaki, Hiromichi Tanaka, Hiroo Yamagata, and Yoshihiro
331

Yonezawa. I am thankful as well as to Professor Nobuhiro Nakayama,
and the Tokyo University Business Law Center, for giving me the
chance to spend time in Japan, and to Tadashi Shiraishi and Kiyokazu
Yamagami for their generous help while I was there.
These are the traditional sorts of help that academics regularly
draw upon. But in addition to them, the Internet has made it possible
to receive advice and correction from many whom I have never even
met. Among those who have responded with extremely helpful advice
to requests on my blog about the book are Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli,
David Gerstein, and Peter DiMauro, as well as a long list of those who
had specific ideas about ways to develop my argument. They included
Richard Bondi, Steven Cherry, David Coe, Nik Cubrilovic, Bob
Devine, Charles Eicher, Thomas Guida, Elihu M. Gerson, Jeremy
Hunsinger, Vaughn Iverson, John Karabaic, Jeff Keltner, James Lindenschmidt, K. L. Mann, Mark Manning, Nora McCauley, Jeffrey
McHugh, Evan McMullen, Fred Norton, John Pormann, Pedro A. D.
Rezende, Shabbir Safdar, Saul Schleimer, Clay Shirky, Adam Shostack,
Kragen Sitaker, Chris Smith, Bruce Steinberg, Andrzej Jan Taramina,
Sean Walsh, Matt Wasserman, Miljenko Williams, “Wink,” Roger
Wood, “Ximmbo da Jazz,” and Richard Yanco. (I apologize if I have
missed anyone; with computers come glitches, and a crash of my
e-mail system meant I lost a bunch of great replies.)
Richard Stallman and Michael Carroll each read the whole book
in draft, and each provided extremely helpful correction and advice.
Michael helped me to see more clearly the significance of the regulation of derivitive works. And Richard corrected an embarrassingly large
number of errors. While my work is in part inspired by Stallman’s, he
does not agree with me in important places throughout this book.
Finally, and forever, I am thankful to Bettina, who has always insisted that there would be unending happiness away from these battles,
and who has always been right. This slow learner is, as ever, grateful for
her perpetual patience and love.

LAWRENCE LESSIG (http://www.lessig.org), professor of law and a John A.
Wilson Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, is founder of the
Stanford Center for Internet and Society and is chairman of the Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org). The author of The Future of Ideas (Random
House, 2001) and Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace (Basic Books, 1999), Lessig
is a member of the boards of the Public Library of Science, the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, and Public Knowledge. He was the winner of the Free Software
Foundation’s Award for the Advancement of Free Software, twice listed in BusinessWeek’s “e.biz 25,” and named one of Scientific American’s “50 visionaries.” A
graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Cambridge University, and Yale Law
School, Lessig clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court
of Appeals.